This post was last modified: 2013-03-12, 15:50 by alexnail.

I must admit I am entirely new to video as a genre full stop, but I've been having problems with my video export which I hope are user related.

I have 3 main problems:

1 - A 10 second video at 720p 24fps takes approximately 30 minutes to export from lightroom using the pro templates. Is that normal? Is there anything I can do to speed things up?

2 - The 720p footage seems to show compression artifacts in skies etc. I am exporting directly from RAW.

3 - 1080p footage using the pro template shows totally unacceptable artifacts on playback, ie squares that appear in skies that shouldnt be there at all. More detailed areas of the image seem to be unaffected but skies are really bad.

My process is very simple at the moment. Import RAW files, edit a little in LR and sync, export using the templates. I havent started using LRTimelapse itself yet. I was really hoping that I would be able to export high definition timelapse sequences direct from LR without going to After Effects etc. At the moment this seems unlikely. I suspect user error, but at the same time I can't see what I am doing wrong.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Alex

Hard to say what's wrong there, normally the PRO templates lead to very good results.
Please make sure you have the same framerates (24fps) set in slideshow-module and on video output. Are you really sure you selected the Video preset from LRTimelapse in the video export dialog? It's not enough to select the slideshow template.
Details can be found here:
http://forum.lrtimelapse.com/Thread-how-...ee-and-pro

Another thing is that not all players are able to play back such high bit rates. Try with VLC...

Okay, thank you very much. It was indeed my media player. VLC had no problems.

Still it remains that I see compression artifacts that are more significant than I was expecting. The video used "LRTimelapse 24fps" as the slideshow template and was exported as 1080p @24.000 LRTimelapse Pro (Full HD). The video is just over 9 seconds long, is comprised of 227 frames and has a filesize of 67MB (seems a little low?)

I have attached an area of grey sky which shows the compression fairly evidently. Is this to be expected? If so do I need to create the timelapse in AE etc?

Thanks,

Alex

   

An MP4 encoder has its limitations... It depends from what else is in the frames and other factors. MP4 will always be compressed. If you want uncompressed Footage or lossless compression you will have to use After Effects.

Okay, thanks for the quick response Gunther. I understand that you've had to work within the limitations of Lightroom, I guess I am just too picky!

I guess like jpeg compression subtle gradients will always look worse than more detailed areas.

Thanks again,

Alex

It's not really a limitation of Lightroom, but with compressed video. There's no codec which is able to give the quality known from high resolution RAW-Files with an acceptable video-filesize. Especially a uniform sky is quite a problem for video - it's the point most codecs will try to save data and there's a loss in the small differences we often want to save and see.
As Gunther mentioned you can go lossless with eg AfterEffects but the videofiles are not playable on a normal computer because of the enormous bandwith. When encoding the final video in the editing software you'll have the same problem like you described with Lightroom. The advantage in quality is that you don't encode the files twice like going with mp4 from LR in the editingprocess.

Thanks, I have to say I am a little surprised in a way. I do find the artifacts noticeable without really looking for them, but if thats just what happens with video them I will have to put up with it I guess!

In other news I tried my first Holy Grail sequence yesterday with Gunthers workflow and the results were pretty much flawless (except for issues related to shooting jpeg) so I am very happy indeed with the software.

Alex