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Final Cut / Compressor HD to SD for DVD
After a great deal of effort, I discovered a straight forward way to get an HD sequence (color corrected in Apple Prores 422) to an mpeg-2 stream for DVD authoring. I have spent days beating my head against the wall, and not finding anything particularly helpful on the web – so I’m sharing it here.
Perhaps readers will see where there are ways to improve this, but after close comparison, this seems to be the best way to preserve detail without accumulating artifacts. . .
The secret in Compressor is . . . don’t use the Apple presets. And don’t use frame controls.
I do it in two steps . . .
Step 1 – downsize the prores sequence from 1080i to 480i (with NTSC pixels)
I would have done this sending the sequence directly to Compressor, but there is a bug which means that text generators don’t use the proper aspect ratio, and the text is distorted (fat and short). This can be avoided by using the old method of exporting a Quicktime reference movie of the sequence.
Create a batch in compressor using the Apple ProRes 422 preset – be sure the video settings has the ‘interlaced’ box checked – change the dimensions and the pixel ratio on the geometry tab. make the audi pass-through.
Let it rip .. .
Step 2 – transcode the prores file to mpeg2 elementary stream
Add the file created by the previous step to a new compressor batch. use the mpeg2 elementary stream preset. choose the SD DVD setting, set the quality (mbps) to what suits (for top quality with short videos, i use 6.6 avg an 7.9 max). make sure frame controls are OFF.
also add the Dolby Digital preset for audio (from one of the DVD presets). this also has to be changed, because it automatically selects ‘film standard compression’ in the preprocessing tab. this is a no-no, unless you mastered your audio with the intention to do that. also, you may not want your audio attenuated on the dvd to match other tracks with the dialog normatlization function – to turn it off, set it to -31. use what ever bps strikes your fancy 192 or 224 kbps are supposedly as good as it gets for stereo.
That’s it. . . . you now have your .m2v file.
one final note, if you are rendering video to use as a background in DVD studio pro . . . it is very important not to have it encoded twice into mpeg2 – the second pass really makes it ugly. so if you are going to add graphics / buttons on top of your menu – import the file from step 1 above (while it is still a quicktime prores movie), and let DVD studio do the rendering it will do anyways once you’ve added graphics and buttons on top.
I hope this saves someone the headaches I’ve experienced these last few days. . . .
the output is better than any attempt to use frame controls to resize and deinterlace the prores as it is transcoded directly (and interlaced again) into mpeg2.
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16 Replies
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Thanks Ben…good info. A faster way would be to nest your clip into a 720×480 sequence and export out of FCP through Compressor. Glad to see youre happy. BTW….Just so you know, this question is probably asked an average of 3 times a week on this forum 🙂
We need to write out a stickie and include your workflow as well.
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great advice, i’ll try it next – anything to avoid having to render everything before making a quicktime reference movie . . .
thanks for the additional tip.
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Why are you fellows so keen on Compressor, how do you think it compares with BitVice. Great SD DVD’s from HD.
Michael Slowe
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I actually hate compressor for MPEG 2 encoding but its great for down and up conversions. For an add on tool that is 🙂 I personally dont use Compressor for anything but many folks here dont need or want another encoder. I love Bitvice though
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Eric, do you think that BitVice will soon be doing a BD encoding? The only way at present seems to be H264 in Compressor then burn with Toast 10.
Michael Slowe
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Dont know….that would be nice but if your serious about providing BD you need to have a PC
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Why a PC for BD? Even if I encode through using H264 in Compressor and burn in Toast surely this can be done on a Mac?
Michael Slowe
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Alot more tool and utilities, better encoders and you can actually playback on a PC. Toast is fine but it limits bitrates. Lots of free authoring and encoding options as well for PC.
$400 will get you great system
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Cinemacraft!
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Yes, Andrius, I’ve heard that before but doesn’t it costs THOUSANDS? I believe Hollywood uses it for their feature films with multiple passes but is it practical for us?
Michael Slowe
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