Hi All,
I attended on the section about videos of Wikimania, where one of the
topics was, that Wikimedia Commons needs more videos.
Until now, I tried to upload a video only ones, and this was the result:
*
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T128826
The main reasons are
* While I have experience with photography, I am a bad cinematographer;
* I am not familiar with the video formats, their parameters and how can I
convert between formats (keeping the quality high as much as possible).
After Wikimania I decided to upload some videos I recorded during
Wikimania, and I spent a day with this task without a real success. I would
like to share this experience, and maybe you can give me advice.
First I tried to convert my MP4 (H264+AAC) records to webm format. I
started with a relatively smaller video with the size of around 200 MB.
1. I tried the
https://tools.wmflabs.org/videoconvert/ tool.
I logged in, started to upload the video. Uploading was very slow. After a
longer time the page showed, that the upload was finished, but as soon as I
wanted to move on the next step, I realized, that I had to log in again.
Then I realized, that the video was uploaded only partly (probably I was
logged out because of an unknown reason). I tried to convert the video, but
there was no status update, how long should I wait. After one hour I
reloaded the page, and the tool told me, I have to log in again. After that
I saw, that I lost the session and I should start it again. After that I
jumped to the next tool.
2. I tried the
https://tools.wmflabs.org/video2commons/ tool.
The interface is nice, my feeling was, that it was faster (but still a long
time). After I uploaded the video, I chose the VP9 format (I think it
provides better quality that VP8). After some minutes I received an error
message: Exitcode: 1 Ok, I restarted the conversion, but in the end I got
the same result. I had to choose between restart the conversion or delete
the task, and finally I deleted the task. With that, I deleted the uploaded
video in the same time, there was no way to change the conversion settings
only. I jumped to an offline tool (because this uploading process will be
even longer with larger videos).
Note: none of the online conversion tools (nor the Upload Wizard on
Commons!) has the option to pause the uploading process, I can only
completely cancel it. It would be useful, because uploads can take hours
long and meanwhile I should use my internet connection for example for a
call or internet banking temporarily (both happened yesterday).
3. I tried to convert using the latest VLC video player. After I set the
parameters, I clicked convert. Then the software completely crashed. I
tried ones more, with the same result.
4. As a last try, I downloaded the XMedia Recode software.
And after I learnt the software a little bit, I was able to convert my
video.
I tried with different setups, but I didn't see the really big difference
with the video compressed 1/10 of the highest quality settings...
I set the bitrate of the audio channel to 192 kb/s, but I have no feeling
with the video channel.
I am wondering what are the optimal settings (compression level without
observable quality loss) based on your experience.
Best,
Samat