I try to upload an mp4 file which is definitely within the upload limit of 100mb, yet it tells me "error: ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid - Validation failed: video must be WebM with VP8/VP9 or MP4 with AV1, but found mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 with h264"

They're the public videos kriskawaii releases onto furaffinity, which he has given me permission to post here, but so far I've only posted GIFs, because of this issue I am having.

I could REALLY do with some help fixing this.

MP4 is a container format, it can contain various formats of video

E621 does not accept h264 or h265 due to patent and licensing issues, it would be excessively expensive (I belive the patents for these expire within the next few years so we will likely accept them eventually, but that's still a long way off)
We only accept AV1, which are exceedingly rare
I'm sure someone can come along and tell you an ffmpeg command to convert it either to AV1 or a WEBM, you can also find some commands online
do not just pick any random online converter, many of them will cause various issues that arent obvious unless you're looking for them like Janitors are

donovan_dmc said:
MP4 is a container format, it can contain various formats of video

E621 does not accept h264 or h265 due to patent and licensing issues, it would be excessively expensive (I belive the patents for these expire within the next few years so we will likely accept them eventually, but that's still a long way off)
We only accept AV1, which are exceedingly rare
I'm sure someone can come along and tell you an ffmpeg command to convert it either to AV1 or a WEBM, you can also find some commands online
do not just pick any random online converter, many of them will cause various issues that arent obvious unless you're looking for them like Janitors are

thats wild that thats the reason we cant accept certain video formats

to op: one of your best bets for advice on conversion is the video expert himself Mairo

It's even wilder that somehow hosting the video is OK, converting the video to 2-high-fee64 is OK, but using a browser to play the video from hosted link is not OK. <--- Note: Might be wrong but that seems the implication.

It would make sense that you'd only have to license it if your site does automatic conversions to it, but like I said that would make sense.

donovan_dmc said:
MP4 is a container format, it can contain various formats of video

E621 does not accept h264 or h265 due to patent and licensing issues, it would be excessively expensive (I belive the patents for these expire within the next few years so we will likely accept them eventually, but that's still a long way off)
We only accept AV1, which are exceedingly rare
I'm sure someone can come along and tell you an ffmpeg command to convert it either to AV1 or a WEBM, you can also find some commands online
do not just pick any random online converter, many of them will cause various issues that arent obvious unless you're looking for them like Janitors are

I really need help getting it to work, I've been trying really hard and messing around in VLC media player to try to get it to work.

donovan_dmc said:
MP4 is a container format, it can contain various formats of video

E621 does not accept h264 or h265 due to patent and licensing issues, it would be excessively expensive (I belive the patents for these expire within the next few years so we will likely accept them eventually, but that's still a long way off)
...

Hopefully sooner rather than later, but even then it would only be h264, which is worse than VP9 and AV1 which we already support, only reason to have it is because majority of other video platforms haven't moved on from h264 and artists just go what other artists have told them to use which is also h264.
And even there, we do have major upcoming issues with platforms like Bsky, where they hard-transcode to 30 FPS regardless of input, so right now we do have a lot of transcodes where extra frames are dropped during transcode, making videos arguabely closer to artists original export, with audio from 𝕏 that's not peaking and fucked up, so how to deal with these posts.
h265 still gives me warnings on clean windows install to buy license from Microsoft Store lol

alphamule said:
It's even wilder that somehow hosting the video is OK, converting the video to 2-high-fee64 is OK, but using a browser to play the video from hosted link is not OK. <--- Note: Might be wrong but that seems the implication.

It would make sense that you'd only have to license it if your site does automatic conversions to it, but like I said that would make sense.

It's basically differences between licensing. For end users using fully free software, these have been essentially free to use for ages now, which might be their business strategy, because that way consumers get accustomed for getting their videos in that specific format, so now they are getting the money from platforms and other places because users demand the support and newer h265 they just made the licensing even more strict so that more places have to pay more, which is why we are still stuck with h264 with basically everything even though at this point it has been made obsolete format from newer format by same group and free alternatives.

Transcoding is extremely time and resource heavy, so even the current samples on the site will take couple minutes after upload to be done - and those are made with fast presets and shitty quality, to do transcoding that's proper quality would most likely require server upgrade.

freakazoid123 said:
I really need help getting it to work, I've been trying really hard and messing around in VLC media player to try to get it to work.

Last time people used VLC for video transcoding, we were getting corrupted videos almost daily basis, so that's why there's now 1 hour playtime cap in place which prevents VLC converted files from being uploaded, because they are so messed up that playtime can be thousands of hours or negative.
FFmpeg or HandBrake are two software I can usually recommend, however FFmpeg is CLI only and HandBrake does have it's own weirdness like stupid default settings that you need to alter and disable a lot and that does require some level of knowledge what you are doing, things like anamorphic being auto, resolution is cap with aspect ratio rather than straight up "use source", FPS is variable, two pass is disabled in some modes, etc. etc.

freakazoid123 said:
I try to upload an mp4 file which is definitely within the upload limit of 100mb, yet it tells me "error: ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid - Validation failed: video must be WebM with VP8/VP9 or MP4 with AV1, but found mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 with h264"

They're the public videos kriskawaii releases onto furaffinity, which he has given me permission to post here, but so far I've only posted GIFs, because of this issue I am having.

I could REALLY do with some help fixing this.

I got it to work by converting with the Convertio website!

freakazoid123 said:
I got it to work by converting with the Convertio website!

donovan_dmc said:
do not just pick any random online converter, many of them will cause various issues that arent obvious unless you're looking for them like Janitors are

People never listen

donovan_dmc said:
People never listen

maybe that one wasnt random? fingers crossed

donovan_dmc said:
People never listen

Well I asked around and they couldn't really help. The animations seem to have uploaded and play just fine. If there's an issue I'm not aware of, please let me know. (I've been uploading kris-kawaii animations, so you can see the posts by searching that)

donovan_dmc said:
People never listen

https://youtu.be/yWULCfJ2PGA

freakazoid123 said:
Well I asked around and they couldn't really help. The animations seem to have uploaded and play just fine. If there's an issue I'm not aware of, please let me know. (I've been uploading kris-kawaii animations, so you can see the posts by searching that)

The reason why we actively condemn the use of online converters is that more often than not you would encounter quality issues.

@Mairo would have to put in the extra work to check your uploads to see if they are fine.

thegreatwolfgang said:
@Mairo would have to put in the extra work to check your uploads to see if they are fine.

CRF seems to be 27 which is usually OK for IRL material and defaults streaming optimization on, with "do not change" to other settings, to that's at least good start.
Seems to give VMAF score of 96 luckily for these videos because it's mostly extremely simplistic shapes, slow movement and render noise.
E: I take some of that back, actually looking at 100% scale, the noise just goes super fucking blurry, so it's no longer representable of original file.

Just that this is definitely the case of just pressing lots of buttons and thing turning out OK accidentally, rather than knowing what you are doing so even just changing source material can make this solution much worse immidiately.

mairo said:
CRF seems to be 27 which is usually OK for IRL material and defaults streaming optimization on, with "do not change" to other settings, to that's at least good start.
Seems to give VMAF score of 96 luckily for these videos because it's mostly extremely simplistic shapes, slow movement and render noise.
E: I take some of that back, actually looking at 100% scale, the noise just goes super fucking blurry, so it's no longer representable of original file.

Just that this is definitely the case of just pressing lots of buttons and thing turning out OK accidentally, rather than knowing what you are doing so even just changing source material can make this solution much worse immidiately.

Weirdly enough, it seems it's Kris-kawaii's older animations are the fuzzy ones. I got them from his furaffinity, and those GIFs aren't converted, they're just saved from furaffinity and put onto e621 (Except for that one with the USB drive swallowing animation, that was an AVI I converted to GIF) Maybe it's the type of rendering he doesn't use anymore? Here's the link to the original animation post, you'll see it's all static-ey from there https://www.furaffinity.net/view/32502211

Edit: I'm no expert in these things, and I wanted to say I really appreciate the work staff like you do, Mario. Thanks for keeping the site in such high quality! :3

mairo said:
Hopefully sooner rather than later, but even then it would only be h264, which is worse than VP9 and AV1 which we already support, only reason to have it is because majority of other video platforms haven't moved on from h264 and artists just go what other artists have told them to use which is also h264.
And even there, we do have major upcoming issues with platforms like Bsky, where they hard-transcode to 30 FPS regardless of input, so right now we do have a lot of transcodes where extra frames are dropped during transcode, making videos arguabely closer to artists original export, with audio from 𝕏 that's not peaking and fucked up, so how to deal with these posts.
h265 still gives me warnings on clean windows install to buy license from Microsoft Store lol

It's basically differences between licensing. For end users using fully free software, these have been essentially free to use for ages now, which might be their business strategy, because that way consumers get accustomed for getting their videos in that specific format, so now they are getting the money from platforms and other places because users demand the support and newer h265 they just made the licensing even more strict so that more places have to pay more, which is why we are still stuck with h264 with basically everything even though at this point it has been made obsolete format from newer format by same group and free alternatives.

Transcoding is extremely time and resource heavy, so even the current samples on the site will take couple minutes after upload to be done - and those are made with fast presets and shitty quality, to do transcoding that's proper quality would most likely require server upgrade.

Last time people used VLC for video transcoding, we were getting corrupted videos almost daily basis, so that's why there's now 1 hour playtime cap in place which prevents VLC converted files from being uploaded, because they are so messed up that playtime can be thousands of hours or negative.
FFmpeg or HandBrake are two software I can usually recommend, however FFmpeg is CLI only and HandBrake does have it's own weirdness like stupid default settings that you need to alter and disable a lot and that does require some level of knowledge what you are doing, things like anamorphic being auto, resolution is cap with aspect ratio rather than straight up "use source", FPS is variable, two pass is disabled in some modes, etc. etc.

Given how VLC works, I suspect it was some settings issues? I mean, it has this huge library it uses. I've not seen it when reMUXing videos or even with recompression, so now I'm curious WTH they did wrong. Granted, I don't actually use VLC for the majority of things I'd post on here. (God, I hate Ugoira!) I use it for fixing broken videos, ironically.

freakazoid123 said:
Weirdly enough, it seems it's Kris-kawaii's older animations are the fuzzy ones. I got them from his furaffinity, and those GIFs aren't converted, they're just saved from furaffinity and put onto e621 (Except for that one with the USB drive swallowing animation, that was an AVI I converted to GIF) Maybe it's the type of rendering he doesn't use anymore? Here's the link to the original animation post, you'll see it's all static-ey from there https://www.furaffinity.net/view/32502211

Edit: I'm no expert in these things, and I wanted to say I really appreciate the work staff like you do, Mario. Thanks for keeping the site in such high quality! :3

One of the huge problems with online converters is that they absolutely do not document what options they used, what libraries, etc. And they don't have drop downs for the high-quality options most of the time.