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Quicktime DV-PAL rubbish render qualisty with text – – – – how can I stop this?
Hi,
I have some animations done in After Effects 6.5 Pro on a Mac. These have to go onto a PC to be used in building a DVD in Encore. To preview the clips I have rendered them using the Soronson 3 compressor, and the have come out perfect quaility. However will the quailty be lost when I transcode these into Encore? I have tried rending the animations using the DV-PAL comprerssion settings, and it looks good up until the text appears on the screen. The edges to the text are quite pixelated and fuzzy. Their quality settings in the composition are on Full and Best and they look fine with a RAM preview. Is there anyway to stop this? Or will i have to use the Sorenson 3 compressor (which gives the best results I’ve found) and risk banding on the gradients or loss of quality of the overall animation?Any help or suggestions would be great!
Thanks,
Martin.——————
http://www.triggerset.co.uk
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9 Replies
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Ow! Do not render to Sorenson! That is a delivery codec, designed for the final video to be viewed, not for a video to be sent somewhere else for further encoding and degradation. And Sorenson is a web codec for low-data-rate playback.
Working backwards:
– the final video will play on a DVD authored in Encore.
– That DVD needs a video in MPEG-2 format. This can be created in Encore, Squeeze, or Compressor on the Mac.
– the source for that MPEG-2 video has to be high quality, either uncompressed or Quicktime Animation. If you can use Compressor on the Mac, you can create the MPEG-2 files from the Quicktime Animation file. If not, you need to send an uncompressed AVI to Encore, if I recall. Anyway, the video has to be high quality, not Sorenson nor DV.
– To create that high quality source video, you’d probably use AE.Don’t expect to play back the Animation/uncompressed movie. It is probably too much data for your computer to play back smoothly. However, it is a fine source for Compressor or Encore to encode to MPEG-2. Which you can play back.
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good reply
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Steve is correct, of course.
However, the problem you exerienced is due to something else.
True, DV is far from being an ideal codec for intermediate use in graphic animaton. But it’s not THAT bad.Here’s the thing: About six or seven years ago, when the Quicktime DV codec appeared, showing those files on a computer screen in real time was not very easy for the average computer. Because of this, Quicktime files with DV codec have by default turned on an option that shows the file at half resolution. The reason for this is no longer there, but they didn’t change it anyway. That’s why your text looks so ugly 🙂 Quicktime files captured or exported using the DV codec are shown in a low resolution preview mode.
In versions prior to Quicktime 7, you had to go to movie properties and turn on the High quality flag for the video track. In QT 7, it’s so much easier, go to preferences and enable “use high quality when available” (or similar wording).
All the best,
AdolfoAdolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
Thanks for the explanation of the DV settings, I thought that it was strange for it to be such low quality.
I rendered the animations out as uncompressed Quicktime Animation, which playback fine on my computer, and the quality is good too. I used compressor to the convert and compress to MPEG2 after trying a couple of different settings I have found one that works. So thanks for you help :o) I just have one question:
There seems to be some kind of effort to make me not to use sorenson 3, I tried converting this to MPEG2 and its quality is fine too. I know you say its used for the web, but if the results are fine and the file sizes are small, what wold be the suggestion not to use it. Before my previous post I was only using the sorenson3 quicktimes to preview the animations for detail and movement on my computer, surely there is nothing wrong or techically bad with this?
I am just curious as I have found it to be a great compressor.
Thanks.
Martin -
Use what you like. If it works for you, do it.
You are checking your results on a good video NTSC/ PAL monitor, right?
Most people find they get better results compressing to mpeg2 from uncompressed footage, or if they have to use a compressed source e.g. because they have a long-form program, then from the best quality compressed source they can manage.
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Yeah, I’ve been checking on a external broadcast monitor and they look good. I was just wondering if there was more the soronsen3 and why not to use it that I would find out later when something went wrong. It seemed odd that people were suggestion not to use it when it was giving fast and good results.
cheers!
Martin -
If you used Sorenson as source material to be encoded to MPEG-2, and you liked the resulting MPEG-2 files, then go ahead and use Sorenson for your source.
There are no hidden bombs here, except:
1. you can’t predict how many times source material will be encoded, so it’s best to use the highest quality for it (e.g. Animation or Photo-JPEG if you’re short on space)
2. AE has crashed when using Sorenson sources, at least on my machine
3. Other people (e.g. editors) may not like being given Sorenson files as source, so you may be in for a re-render to Animation (if you still have access to the original AEP)But if it’s just you, use what looks good and doesn’t give you trouble. 🙂
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[Martin Banks] “I was just wondering if there was more the soronsen3 and why not to use it that I would find out later when something went wrong. It seemed odd that people were suggestion not to use it when it was giving fast and good results.”
Martin: The Sorenson Video 3 codec is a rather ancient technology that was designed to be a strictly delivery/distribution codec rather than a production codec. And you know what? Even at its’ core area of relevance, it has been surpassed long ago. So much so, that Apple stopped relying on it and moved to open standard based delivery codecs, like the outstanding H-264/Advanced MPEG-4 thing.
Why a codec like Sorenson is not usually such a good idea in the production stage? Since it was again designed as a production codec for low data rates mediums like the Web, there’s a threshold of quality above which increasing the data rate will only produce a bigger file, not a better one. Then it uses an interframe compression scheme, where most frames don’t really “exist” but are calculated from how different they are to other frames (and thus it’s completely impractical for editing, it’s not “scrubabble”). And for all its’ merits in shrinking file sizes, it is very expensive in terms of processing power: a full NTSC or PAL size file encoded with it is very demanding for the CPU (the last thing you want in a post-production workflow). Finally, while you will get results that can look really good, on the really demanding stuff it will show its’ limitations, or its’ nature as low bandwidth codec.
Still, as Steve said, if it works for you….
But don’t expect post production people to be thrilled when you give them a Sorenson encoded file as a master 🙂Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo@adolforozenfeld.com -
Fortuneately (or unfortunately!) for me I do all the editing too, so I’m the one putting up with the no-scrubable clips, but I will remember to use the amination compressor from now as the results have been good, and now that I know the true nature of Sorenson3 I can use the animation one to improve my production workflow.
Cheers! :o)
Martin
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