evilC, on 29 October 2013 - 01:34 PM, said:
There is nothing inherently wrong with H264.
It's the quality settings that matter - what method of H264 capture are you talking about? If it is a CPU-based system such as FRAPS, of course it is going to suck because it has to do it with as little CPU as possible, in real-time.
It is 100% possible to create a LOSSLESS video with H264, ergo your statement is false.
What appears to be lossless to your eyes is not at all lossless to an encoder. Compression = Lossy. H264 creates smaller files which is why some people prefer to record with it. When you take a video that has been recorded in H264, edit it in Vegas or Premiere, export it (encodes again as H264), and upload it to YouTube (encodes it to very low bitrate H264) you end up with a steaming pile of distortion. The file you send to YT needs to be as close to source as possible. You should send it through the H264 encoder as few times as possible to get that result.
If you want high quality HD content you should avoid recording in H264. Even with a 80,000 bitrate crf:<10 your video will look bad in busy scenes when it hits YT.