Hello---Im in desperate need of some help! I work in the Tech Industry so I am familiar with most of these compression concepts but I find myself with a kink in my process that is resulting in some nasty artifacts.
My Goal: to shoot/compile/post to vimeo, timelapses (mostly astrophotography of varying sorts)
My Issues: gross blocky artifacts regardless of codec/bitrate(ONLY ON VIMEO, not on my PC)
My Pipeline: shoot 5k images with Canon Mk2/6D, develop stills in LRTimelapse->Lightroom, Export as Original size or 1080p stills, export image sequence using latest After Effects or Premiere Pro (scaling images to 1080p if necessary)--->upload to Vimeo as 1080p.
My Compression Settings: H.264/High Profile/Sq Pixels/tried 4.1-5.1 Levels/tried AE VBR and PPRO VBR_2pass/have tried so many various bitrates as it seemed like it could be the issue (target=10mbps, max=20mbps all the way to obscene 100/100+) I am familiar with birtate as a concept, but the numbers are a bit arbitrary for me. Vimeo says target 10 max 20, but ive read lots of people say with changing light conditions it may need to be higher?
I have even tried .mov with "animation" codecLossless which still gets artifacts.
I have read so many forums, but at the end of the day it seems like it could be something quite small/simple wrong with my workflow. As Ive seen many successful vimeo timelapses that are gorgeous. Ive given up on developing (lrt->lr) until I can get a workflow to final product that works.
Here are some example videos with Password "vimeo"
https://vimeo.com/122950826
https://vimeo.com/123036899
https://vimeo.com/121443384
https://vimeo.com/123036690
Any Help would be Very Much Appreciated!!!

Please check the Vimeo compression guidelines:
https://vimeo.com/help/compression

Hey---I am quite familiar with this page Even with target of 10 and max of 10mbps I am still getting quite a bit of noise. I have followed these guidelines exactly with less than great results. If my process seems sound and there is no need to exceed 10 mbps, then im not quite sure where to go from here?
Thanks for your time!
josh

My experience is: vimeo will always recompress, no matter what you do. So rather give it a better quality as input.

For example, if I use the LRTimelapse compressor (delivers better H.264 quality then Adobes) then I choose 1080p h.264, "high quality", LRT Plus Motion Blur: Medium, Sharpen and upload this to vimeo. Then after uploading in the Video section of the Vimeo settings I activate 1080p. This gives not original quality (don't thik it's possible at all) but a pretty good one actually.

Hey Gunther---Really good to know about your LRT export settings. Im happy to upgrade to the personal license, but havent as of yet as I wanted to confirm this workflow works for me. And I have to say I am quite impressed with the structure/compatability and flow of LRTimelapse. That being said I will most likely purchase a license soon.

With the basic workflow, and without using the Blur/Sharpen additions, I cannot speak to whether they would solve my compression issues. I have been in contact with the Vimeo Dev "Team" and they said that "due to the visual complexity, the encoded bitRate on the Vimeo side might not be high enough." Clearly they are attempting to keep the rate low enough for everyone to stream fast.

They did offer to encode my video at an "extra-high bit rate" but I havent seen the results. There is nothing special and nothing too crazy in my sample videos...So without taking them up on their offer, surely you are uploading videos just fine and they are smooth!? Perhaps then the variable that exists in our workflow is simply a Pay License for LRTimelapse? If so, id gladly pay any amount to get a smooth result!

Of course, the smoother a sequence is, the better for those encoders with small bandwidth.
The LRT Motion Blur Plus helps to reduce Bandwidth by reducing noise and smooting but of course only to a certain level.
The best quality you will get from smooth sequences without flicker and big changes. So if you use ND filters when shooting for example and prevent flicker, this will help a lot as well!

Flickery sequences with lots of movement will always be hard for the low-bandwith encoders of YT and Vimeo.

Sure---in considering less 'flicker', I wonder if I should focus on smoothing various bits of TL...such as tides coming in and out which frenetically could cause potential issues.
The TLs i posted as samples have all been run through relatively intense smoothing via DeFlicker (LRT). But of course you will get some headlights or headlamps or torches coming through frame that would give it a spike.
I wonder if vimeoPro offers better bitRate? I have asked their dev team the same but havent heard back. The comparisons on their site dont specify exactly if it does offer a higher bandwidth encoding on their end.

Either way I think Ill pick up a license of LRTimelapse to test some of the post options, as well as have the option to include more than 400 images.
If you have any further tips for astro TLs, that you think could benefit, Im all ears!

thanks again Gunter!