Twitter won't accept mp4 from C4d? 3rd party renderer or addon to improve mp4 output options?

#1

With hundreds of 15 second clips to output it is just not practical to have a multi-stage render process. I do not have the time to render out image sequences, then convert to delivery format in Media Encoder or similar. I absolutely NEED a single stage render direct to mp4.

I have all the other details worked out with extensive nested use of take system, and I thought all was well, but…

For some reason, the mp4s output by C4d are not accepted by Twitter, Meta-Z metadata tagger, and a few other critical apps or platforms. I have no idea why. I have tried every combination of mp4 render settings I could think of, and clips with seemingly same settings coming out of ME have no problems.

At this point, if I can’t fix this, I’ll have to abandon C4d, and recreate the entire template in AE or similar. I REALLY don’t want to do that. I like everything else about the C4d workflow better, but since I absolutely must have a single stage render:

Is there some 3rd party renderer, codec pack, or other addon that would either give more options for the mp4 output, or at least get around whatever it is that TW and others find unacceptable about the mp4’s output by C4d?

If anyone has a guess what exactly the issue might be, I’m all ears. I THINK I’ve tried all the relevant options, but here are most common specs:

Keyframes set to 60 (frame rate is 30)
Bit rate set to 8000

#2

Do you have access to Creative Cloud?
With the standalone “Media Encoder” you can setup watched folders, render image sequences and automate the entire Video encoding, including naming conventions etc.
You can also encode the same image sequences into different video codecs/qualities/etc, all in one go.

#3

I have Media Encoder. I had been using AE previously, and am trying to now use C4d for this instead.

It would be much easier if I were just encoding he same sequences in different settings, but it’s actually a bunch of different versions of the same thing optimized for the dimensions and layout of various social media, so vertical, 4/5, square, etc with the text and images rearranged to fit that shape… so it’s not one video output to 5 codecs, but rather 5 different versions of each video… and versions which can’t just be achieved by cropping differently or similar.

I’ve never used watched folders, so I can look into, and perhaps that’s the best option. Hundreds of videos worth of uncompressed image sequences will put a strain on storage, though. Not the worst problem to have, but still a consideration making me wonder if there is any solution using 3rd party renderer or other addon to allow single stage without rendering and storing all those uncompressed image sequences.

Alternatively, if I could figure out why TW, Meta-Z and others won’t accept the mp4’s coming out of C4d, I wouldn’t have a problem at all since everything else works beautifully.

AFAIK, I’ve tried any version of output settins that should make any difference.

Latest round of mp4 outputs, for instance is doing:

Keyfame = 60 (frame rate is 30)
Bit rate = 8000 (Tried others, but AFAIK, this is kbit, so equivalent to CBR setting of 8 in ME?)
AAC 320
Audio sample rate is bizarrely fixed at 48k which is odd since linked audio file is actually at 44.1k
I’m not seeing where or why any such settings would cause mp4 to be unacceptable to TW, etc.

#4

did you report it as a bug?

#5

Not really sure if it’s a bug vs certain outlets being picky about specific details of mp4’s.

I think it was TW that wouldn’t, for instance, accept mp4’s with embedded poster images. Took me 2 days to troubleshoot that. I do find it odd that Meta-Z won’t accept them either, but they play fine in VLC, QT, for instance.

#6

I just realized when re-reading your post that I may have been missing something in this whole process. I’ve been avoiding multi-step processes in order to minimize the number of times I need to touch the system so I can keep as much as possible going in the background as I come in and out of the studio, etc.

I had heard of watch folders before, but hadn’t really dug in.

If it is possible to render out of c4d to a png sequence or whatever, then have AME automatically run the re-encoding to mp4 overnight, then I could just dump all the intermediate files each morning o avoid all my drives filling up in a week, and that would be the extend of the extra work on my end. If there’s a way to automate THAT, then maybe there’s NO extra work.

Hmmm… Do I have that basic workflow right?

#7

Yeah :slight_smile:
I don’t know if AME allows to plan activity for certain hours; but yes, with watched folders, there’s no user input required.

#8

From the tuts I’ve watched, I’m not seeing any way for ME to tell if the image sequence in a given folder is completed yet, and therefore ready to run. They’re just numbered images in a folder, so it would seem to have no way of telling if the sequence is complete yet.

Looks like it would be more a case of turning on ME before going to bed, letting it take care of moving the completed render and moving the intermediate files to the trash, then me turning it off in the morning.

#9

It’s not ideal, but you could render some kind of high quality movies in C4D and let AME just do a MP4 reencoding?

#10

I haven’t had a chance to step through the workflow yet, but tuts seem to be indicating ME can move the intermediate files to a location of your choice when it’s done, so I’ll see if I can just choose the trash as that location (mac).

If that’s the case, and if it can work off image sequences, then I can just render out image sequences from C4d which is fast, then all I would have to do each day is turn on ME at night, then turn it off and empty the trash in the morning…

I can live with that. I was just trying to avoid as many steps as possible and especially steps PER video since there will be multiple per day.

Each only has a single audio file which is different per incarnation, but matches the project name (so project.wav within /project folder along with project.c4d.) If there’s a way to auto-grab that and do a headless AE render or something to combine them, then that’s fine. If not, then yeah, might need to do .mov output or similar from C4d that contains the audio too. The vids range from 15 seconds to two minutes at 1080, so I’m not terribly worried about stuck renders.

Still working out the scheduling of auto-posting vids daily to TikTok, IG, FB, TW, YT. Seems like each of the schedulers can do some, but not all of the tasks, and I see now that ME itself has some auto-posting capabilities… though not the type of calendar scheduler I’d need.

IG is driving me nuts right now with their incompatible formats within the same app. Just posting a simple 15 second vertical video loop on IG to feed is auto-squared and low-res. Can get around that by posting to IGTV, but does not loop, and 1 minute required, so need to loop in post, then crops BOTH horizontally and vertically in weird ways when linked to feed, and stories have similar incompatibilities with the other two.

Seems almost intentionally convoluted.

#11

With hundreds of 15 second clips to output it is just not practical to have a multi-stage render process. I do not have the time to render out image sequences, then convert to delivery format in Media Encoder or similar.

This is work that can be batch processed, and doesn’t add the sort of time to the process that your words seem to describe. Re-encoding is trivial in terms of time, especially for clips a few seconds long.

Also, keep in mind that all encoders are not equal. It’s quite likely that the H.264 encoder built into C4D isn’t exactly blazing the trail in terms of quality and compression.

Adobe Media Encoder is decent, Handbrake is better, and either one is significantly superior to trying to hack an MP4 directly out of C4D in every possible way except for the time you’d save skipping the process. And barring an unusually extreme urgency that has your publishing deadlines a few minutes away from your renders, it’s not worth skipping.

#12

I guess I didn’t really mean TIME so much as than number of times I need to interact in the process. It can take all night to batch process if it wants. I’m just trying to avoid anything more than a couple of minutes once a day for me to personally manage the extra steps, so the more sophisticated the batch processing script, the less of an issue this becomes.

Turnaround times can be quite short, but overnight is generally fine. Depends on how I manage the week, but there could potentially be dozens of these short vids to convert on some nights.

I bought handbrake so long ago now I don’t thing I’ve looked at it in years. Didn’t realize it was better than ME for this kid of thing. Can’t even remember what I was using it for at this point. Probably have to update it, but should be workable.

Since I need the sound with the clips, and am not aware yet of an automated process to combine the sound files with a rendered image sequence, should I then be going .mov out of c4d, then manually telling handbrake to batch everything in the folder, or are there automation options or other formatting issues for the intermediate stage I should be aware of?

#13

Handbrake has been free as far back as I can remember using it.

Here’s a link to the app I’m talking about: https://handbrake.fr/

Handbrake cannot import image sequences as source, so you can use Media Encoder instead if you’re fine with its output, as that can do watch folders and image sequences out of the box.

If you want to use the better encoding that Handbrake offers, you can output a high quality master from AME, and then use Handbrake to get your H.264 MP4.

Again, these are extra steps, but can be entirely automated with minimal intervention on your part except for the initial setup.

Here’s a tool that can help automate the process with Handbrake:
http://hbbatchbeast.io/

#14

I have been using Staxrip. It is a free GPU encoder that can encode 4k files with an encoding speed of 60fps on a 1080Ti no problem. It uses the build in GPU encoder on Nvidia cards. I have been using it to very quickly encode huge files to 4k HVEC.

You can get the latest verison here:

https://www.videohelp.com/software/StaxRip

This tool has saved me MANY times in deadline mode.

#15

OK, thx. It’s probably been a decade since I’ve used handbrake, so I don’t really remember any of the details, and I never used it for batch processing, so not familiar with those features. Will look into.

#16

Old system, but I put in a 980Ti last year, so that may work well. Will check it out.