what kind of file did you export it to?

Did you try am mp4 with H.264 for the video and AAC for the audio?
Did you add a keyframe every 20 to 30 frames?


if not, try that and see how it works.

there is a lot of good advice on exporting video on this site if you search and look around enough.
serato.com

Yeah, I have seen TONS of killer advice for people using FCP and Vegas, but not much that was specific to Ableton. I did do my tests as mp4 with H.264 and AAC, but it still came out sheisty.

Can I add keyframes in Ableton? Looks like I will have to play with it some more!

Ableton is great to work with...very easy, but the video export settings suck. I tried a lot of different ones from uncompressed mov to mp4, but they all came out pretty bad.

I don't think so... you would do that in Quicktime. I'm sure you can export to QT from LIVE.

:(

That's what I was afraid of!

I will have to try a few other tweaks on the settings, and maybe try exporting to QT and then working with it from there. I am 100% novice on any video editing, but there is a TON of knowledge in this forum to draw from, at least!

If anyone else HAS found workable settings in Ableton, I would love to see them, though!

I have done a couple of vids with LIVE in the past but don't remember the settings I used. I know I had to play around with a few before I got a good result. Haven't used it for vids in a while and the computer I did those on died with the files on it so I can't go back and look at it. I just made a small clip and ran a lot of diff test examples to find one that was good. You may also get diff results by rendering the vid and audio separately and re-associating them in VSL

Word, that's what I am going to have to try. Thanks for the input!

im curious as well. i think i might hit up ableton and see what the dilly is. i just started diving into ableton. would be nice to do all ur editing in one program =] especially ableton!!!

Hello, sorry to bring this topic up again, but I have the same "problem"
I.e. I import a mp4 file that shows that info in MovieInfoBatch:
Movie Tracks:
VideoType: avc1, (
AVC Coding) 620x380
Component 1) lppa, H.264 Decoder v.40004, Dekomprimiert Bilder im H.264AVC-Format.
Audio Tracks:
AudioType: mp4a (48000kHz, 16bit)
Frame rate: 30.00 per second

After changing and saving it as Quicktime option I get a MOV file with the followng attributes:
Movie Tracks:
VideoType: avc1 (H.264 encoded by appl), 384x273
Component 1) lppa, H.264 Decoder v.40004, Dekomprimiert Bilder im H.264AVC-Format.
Audio Tracks:
AudioType: sowt (44100kHz, 16bit)
Component 1) lppa, 16-bit Little Endian v.10115, 16-bit Little Endian format conversion
Frame rate: 30.00 per second

Now you see the resolution gets worse, the audio is different and the format/container is mov :/
I can't find an option to get mp4a for audio, nor to select the container?!
Any ideas? Or do I need to install additional plugins? I'm using a win xp laptop!

Thanks :)

There is some one on here (although i dont remember who) was using ableton, i hit em up on the specs and i do remember hes rendering in an uncompressed format and the using compressor or handbrake to use in vsl....

Ok thanks, just one more thing, audio uncompressed and video as QuickTime uncompressed or in another container? Or doesn't it really matter.

And yeah, what should the vob be then converted to, that can be edited by ableton so the quality remains the same... I guess I should encode it to h.264 then un encode it and then h.264 again...
And one more time I have the problem, that the video comming out of ableton has a lower resolution then the input one... why :/? how can I change this???

Input:
Movie Tracks:
VideoType: avc1, (JVT/AVC Coding) 624x352
Component 1) lppa, H.264 Decoder v.40004, Dekomprimiert Bilder im H.264AVC-Format.
Audio Tracks:
AudioType: mp4a (48000kHz, 16bit)
Frame rate: 24.99 per second

Output:
Movie Tracks:
VideoType: raw (Keine encoded by appl), 482x338
Component 1) lppa, Apple Keiner v.30026, Darstellung der ohne Komprimierung gesicherten Bilder.
Component 2) vuy, Apple RGB in YUV v.30003, Wandelt RGB in YUV um
Audio Tracks:
AudioType: sowt (44100kHz, 16bit)
Component 1) lppa, 16-bit Little Endian v.10115, 16-bit Little Endian format conversion
Frame rate: 30.00 per second

Sorry to spam this post, but I figured it out and it might be interesting for other people struggling around...

The video window represents the output dimension, when you resize it, it shows you the native resolution too, so you should snap it to that one!
A bit to "live" for me, but anyway, got it figured out ;)

The question that I remain with is, to what format the vob should be converted so it can be edited by ableton, cause afterwords it needs to be handbreaked anyway to mp4 :)

Btw: The uncompressed output results a few GB files, which are even bigger then the whole dvd that I got the clip from... a better solution? This seems to me nonsense ;)

Thanks :)

In Ableton I usually export out a quicktime file using the animation setting as the codec. This makes a large file but it's completely uncompressed and appropriate for sending to whatever you want to use to render an mp4.

Some notes about editing with Ableton:

It's native frame rate is 30 frames per second - trying to edit 24p material is a no go

It will produce blended frames when you stretch video or if you try to edit material that's not 30p - even 29.97 - no way to turn that off

Ableton can only cut material to note divisions and not to specific frames, this doesn't make for a clean edit but it's good enough to rough something out to send over to another program that's more suitable for editing.

I recommend learning Vegas, once you get a feel for it will save you a lot of time.

I used ableton for some of my video edits.. workes great.. Watchwww.youtube.com

Sorry to massively bump this but if you are still interested here is how I get great results from ableton. Convert the VOB/original file to a LOSSLESS (more or less) codec - i use prores422. If you need to use handbrake to do this you can achieve a basically lossless file by using h.264 and setting RF to 0 on your export (making every frame a keyframe).

Do your stuff in ableton.

Export it out using prores422 again setting the resolution size manually and the fps manually.

Convert that file to your preferred playback settings using handbrake.



This concerns me a little - how did you find this out? Are you sure this is true? I edit PAL and 24p in ableton sometimes. I havent noticed any of the shaky movement I would expect to find if this were true? I always export to the same frame rate as the vids I edit in ableton. Would be great if you could tell me where you heard this :)

This is a fact.

going from any native frame rate to another without taking the proper steps will give you less than desirable results... whether it be jumpy frames (30 to 23.976 without ivtc) or [23.976/25 to29.97/30)
(blended frames, ghosting)

Theres literally a dozen threads on this, in this forum.

Woah, Easy there. Obviously I know that is a fact. I know that most methods of encoding from 30 fps to 25 will look sheet and vice versa. I want to know where the OP found out that ableton's NATIVE FPS IS ACTUALLY 30 FPS. There aren't dozens of threads on that. There aren't any. I looked all over the internet.
Is that a fair question????

I see what your saying....I completely misread that...sorry

is it a fact the frame rate in ableton non-adjustable?
I just did a quick search too, and couldnt find anything....

if that is the case id seriously consider a different program....thats a pretty big issue
quality wise, and on bigger files drift.

That's cool man! Misunderstanding.
Well I know ableton uses the quicktime engine to export. And I know it's not doing any rendering at all until you actually export.
I'm *pretty* sure when you export with quicktime it uses the frame rate you choose to export at as the 'native' frame rate, in which it renders any cuts/changes you've made.

Based on that rather flimsy knowledge I always assumed live did the same thing.
I have edited a lot of 25 fps and 24 fps video in live then exported it to 25 fps or 24 fps without seeing ghosting... If it was really applying changes at 30fps then exporting that at 25 you'd expect to see major ghosting I think?

EDIT: To be clear there is definitely no option to change frame rates in LIVE - nothing even mentioning frame rates. I always imagined that cutting in live was a similar process to making a few quick cuts in quicktime....

In fact here's a good example video I made with a lot of help from live: The original Rolling Stones concert footage was 24p HD rip. I then exported that to prores422 at 24p. I messed with it MASSIVELY in live. I had to get the singing in time and he was singing with a very loose rhythm at the concert so a lot of the time I had to speed the video up or slow it down a HUGE amount. Then Exported to prores for editing in final cut at 24fps then finally exported it to 25 FPS using compressor to upload to youtube. Cannot remember why I changed the frame rate on the last export. Anyway check it out, theres not even ghosting really on parts of the song that I had to slow down heaps.

Watchwww.youtube.com

ableton is not a nle. why are you guys trying to edit videos with it? that's like trying to edit videos with powerpoint.

if you want to edit videos, use an nle. your problems will be solved.

premiere pro
fcp
sony vegas

Not really relevant to the discussion going on - there are many advantages to ableton's rather limited set of video editing capabilities. Also Ableton video editing IS DEFINITELY non linear by any standard I'm pretty sure so that's a weird thing to accuse it of.

Anyway.... Still stuck on this frame rate thing

i use ableton for editing videos ...

i use quicktime move
no compression - best quality

after that i put the file into quicktime 7 pro and export it to mp4 with video sl settings ...

works well for me..

Yeah I do a similar thing. The only thing I would consider changing is your last step: exporting to an mp4 with quicktime. It might be better to do that with handbrake. Handbrake is compliant to a whole bunch of standards for exporting h.264s that video sl works with. It consists of little tweaks and improvements that developers come up with that optimise h.264 (and other codecs) without changing their basic nature. Seeing as quicktime 7.6 is v old, it might not be compliant to those standards, whereas handbrake will. It's just a little safer knowing your files have been encoded in compliance with pro standards. I don't really understand how it works, but this is what everyone tells me.

Thanx man! I'll do so!

And if Handbreak messes up your sound (10% of the VOBs I convert) use MPEG Streamclip ;)

Can someone help me out? What is the best settings to save in FCP? and do I still need to convert it in handbreak, because it seems like when I do I lose the quality even more?

Ok so this is what i did.

COMPRESSION - MPEG-4
QUALITY - BEST
KEY FRAME RATE - 20
BITRATE - 7700 KBITS/SEC
DIMENSIONS - 1280 X 720 HD
UNCHECK PRESERVE ASPECT RATIO AND DEINTERLACE SOURCE VIDEO BOXES.

I think i have to play a little bit with the key frame rate, apparently that would give me better quality. Overall is a very decent quality. Cheers!

Keyframes mostly affect a trade-off between CPU usage (more keyframes in a file takes more resources to decode) and how well the video performs in random-access use (like skipping around the file scrubbing around forward and backwards, stuff we do when DJ-ing in other words).

20 is a perfectly reasonable setting.

ableton is dope for using as a straightening out tool for syncing studio recordings to live videos that are at a different speed or something. i.e. an 70s or 80s band...

awful video quality, but serves its purpose for transitions, or just older songs that have no videos, just live performances.

i just input the video, treat it like a song and warp it, so it's on point throughout. Then, the same with the studio recording, put them in sync at WHATEVER bpm i want and output with high audio quality.

opens limitless possibilities for home made transitions. No one on the floor will care that the video looks like shit for about 30 seconds LOL :)

opens up a buncha transition possibilities. just my 2 cents :)

im far from an expert but this has worked flawless so far.... encode: quicktime movie, compression: photo jpeg...

why not use handbrake?