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Compressor M2V Exports
Hi,
I’m trying to burn HD material onto a SD DVD but the results are more pixelated than i’d imagined. The source is an XDCAM 720 25p quicktime.
The text especially is messy at the edges. This would be the result of the downconversion and the change of pixel aspect ratio from square to PAL CCIR ? I’m hoping there’s a way to improve it.
In compressor, i’ve made sure that every variable is at the highest quality setting:
Two Pass VBR
average bit rate: 7.7
max bit rate: 9
motion estimation: bestIs there something I’m missing? Does it matter whether you open the quicktime directly in compressor or whether you use FCP to ‘export using compressor’? What happens if I choose HD DVD in the compressor m2v settings? Will this material not burn onto an SD DVD in DVD Studio Pro?
This must be a common scenario so i’d appreciate the wisdom of people who’s been there before.
Cheers,
Sherwin -
8 Replies
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This is a common scenario, but unfortunately the leading NLE providers are using very poor quality downscaling algorithms.
You might be interested in reading this article that shows examples of what you are talking about, and provides open source alternatives with studio quality results:
https://www.precomposed.com/blog/2009/07/hd-to-sd-dvd-best-methods/
This one is specific to Final Cut:
https://www.precomposed.com/blog/2009/09/hd-to-sd-final-cut-pro/
This one is an updated article on Adobe CS5:
https://www.precomposed.com/blog/2010/10/hd-to-sd-dvd-cs5-revisited/
There is also lots of good information in the user comments of those articles.
Jon Geddes
http://www.precomposed.com -
[Sherwin Akbarzadeh] “Two Pass VBR
average bit rate: 7.7
max bit rate: 9”
That will cause a ton of playback issue way too high, even the average is too high.With high average bitrates I always recommend using CBR over VBR, every time.
If you are burn the project onto a DVD-R never go over 7.5Mbps for CBR
or
7.0Mbps MAX for VBRAudio needs to be ac3 if video is this high. (it should be ac3 for most things anyway)
Make sure you are encoding as progressive and not interlaced. You can try to turn on Frame Control and turn to best.
HD DVD is for a dead format and can only be played back on fast Macs.
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Thanks guys,
though i haven’t lowered the bit rate yet i did switch several of the frame controls to best and the result is MUCH better. Thanks for the heads up on that one Michael.
All the best,
Sherwin -
you will have a ton of playback issues with the bitrates you listed, even if it helps with quality it will not help with playback. It will stutter on a lot of players.
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I get way superior results by downconvert to SD ProRes 16:9 first out of FCP, then using that as my MPEG2 source. And yeah- keep your max bitrate well below 8 for usable results. Playable on hard drive is not the same as playable on a DVD player.
Noah
Unlock the secrets of 24p, HD and Final Cut Studio with Call Box Training. Featuring the Canon 5D Mark II and 7D.
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Noah, are you finding this to be a workflow for Interlaced HD or just progressive. I found that you great the field order shift if you are not careful with down convert.
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Good question- as I’m always progressive I couldn’t say.
Noah
Unlock the secrets of 24p, HD and Final Cut Studio with Call Box Training. Featuring the Canon 5D Mark II and 7D.
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Michael,
a really good choice on downscaling (and upscaling especially for 1440-formats) is bitvice purifier.I would recommend it to use for all the processes. I figured out, that MPEG Streamclip is doing no good job on downscaling especially from HDV and other 1440-formats.
Streamclip is doing quite a good job (quick and dirty), but bitvice is doing it a lot better.
it doesn´t matter if it is interlaced or progressive as well.
cheers
danny
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