Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Trying to put a demo of my 2010 4003 together for YouTube or Vimeo and I can't seem to get a good final product. The GarageBand audio sounds good (no clipping, good tone) and the video looks decent but once things get onto YouTube (or the movie file onto GarageBand) there's a serious quality loss in spite of trying to preserve as much as I can along the way. And suddenly the sound is clipping?? Does YT have some kind of gain limit?

Any of you savvy video/audio types want to look at this and give me some advice?

Sorry, can't help with the technical problems but I would like to compliment you on the great tone you are getting from your fingers.

There are a lot of tricks to get video to look good on YouTube or Vimeo. One is to upload the best quality file you can. Both of these companies will re-encode the video yet another time. This additional encode stage can really drag your video through the mud.

That said there are many factors that will help or hinder video quality. Quality of the original video, what type of camera, compression and lighting all play a part in quality. I looked at this on an iPhone. It looked ok with the exception of it being a bit dark.

What format and resolution was your original in and what was your upload?

antonius wrote:Sorry, can't help with the technical problems but I would like to compliment you on the great tone you are getting from your fingers.

Hey thanks!! I appreciate you saying that especially considering the sound quality is a bit off.

rikk wrote:There are a lot of tricks to get video to look good on YouTube or Vimeo. One is to upload the best quality file you can. Both of these companies will re-encode the video yet another time. This additional encode stage can really drag your video through the mud.

That said there are many factors that will help or hinder video quality. Quality of the original video, what type of camera, compression and lighting all play a part in quality. I looked at this on an iPhone. It looked ok with the exception of it being a bit dark.

What format and resolution was your original in and what was your upload?

I used iMovie and GarageBand. I made the video in iMovie while letting GarageBand record. I definitely "feel" the extra encode! The video in iTunes isn't perfect but it's a step up. When I exported the movie out of iMovie to my "Movies" folder I used the Large quality. Then I dragged it into GarageBand from the Media Browser, including the sound file from my external mic for the spoken word. I paired this up with my GarageBand audio, which I had tested before to ensure it wasn't clipping. But when I put it together, the audio started clipping a bit. Then when I uploaded it onto YT it got worse.

I do agree the lighting is dark, that's me/my house's fault. I'm not going to worry about that too much (yet).

Format was .mov/QuickTime and I'm not sure about upload at all because I just used YT's quick uploader.

cassius987 wrote:I do agree the lighting is dark, that's me/my house's fault. I'm not going to worry about that too much (yet).

The lighting issue is most likely the auto-exposure system in the video camera reacting to the bright backlighting.

Well, I wish I could offer you some technical expertise on this, but since i have none, i'll say that you have some amazing tones going there and that watching the video made me very excited about the set of circle k balanced .106 set I just ordered for my 2010 4003!

Hmmm yeah definitely something got lost in translation going to youtube land there. I know enough about your skills and musicianship to know you wouldn't record and submit something that distorted. That is weird, I wish I knew more about the youtube process to help. Perhaps you could try reaching out to people who have greater experience submitting bass only videos and see if you get any constructive feedback that way.

Very awesome sound!! Circle K's, awesome strings. I put them on all my Rickenbackers!!

Sepp

Sorry I don't have any technical help to offer, but the bass sounds good despite the degradation.

I don't see it stated, but are those Circle K strings you're using?


Thanks,
bluewhale

Yeah, as previously stated, those are Circle K Balanced Standard 106 strings. They are the best rounds out there (IMHO)!

cassius987 wrote:... those are Circle K Balanced Standard 106 strings...

Then I must try me a set.

bluewhale wrote:

cassius987 wrote:... those are Circle K Balanced Standard 106 strings...

Then I must try me a set.

Yes, you must. You won't regret it!

I've got a balanced .112 set (tuned DGCF) on my 4003 now. I ordered the balanced .106 to come back to standard tuning. They're great strings!

Hello Josh,

If you say the original file sounds normal, then I would think that the original level is too loud (or somehow the volume is boosted on rendering - unlikely)
What I hear is that the sound gets a bit distorted once you play with higher dynamics. This means that originally you probably recorded too loud, "hitting the ceiling" at 0 dB.
Now sometimes this is not so audible when you have the sound in the original uncompressed format (even if the wave is already clipped) but the compression on rendering to a lower quality format and youtube's own compression can make it sound much worse, as it seems to be the case.

I would try the following:

For rendering the same video again:
1-To lower 1 or 2 db the volume of the original sound on your renders - it may be clipped already but subsequent compressing algorithms won't process it like "0 dB"
2-To try to upload to youtube the best quality possible that you can - the bigger the file, the best quality - at least you will avoid lowering the quality of the file prior of being processed by youtube. Ex: upload in mov format.

For new videos - Make sure you have a safe margin until it hits the "red" so the original wave doesn't get clipped.

Good luck!

Miguel
www.miguelbass.com

Great tone from your Rick. The response seem even on all the strings, and overall you have a really fat E !!

I'm digging that tone, Josh!