• Compression Techniques

  poor text quality when compressing to dvd

  Posted by Ryan Say on September 12, 2010 at 5:23 pm

  hi there,
  i’ve had a look over the forums but i can’t seem to find a solution to my problem. sorry if it has been posted already somewhere, but my patience is well and truly stretched.

  my film has got some static credits at the end (white text/black background) so nothing complicated.
  the text looks great in FCP, when export it to mov – it looks great.
  i put the mov in to compressor and use the best quality 90 mins setting and the preview is awful.

  i am only looking at it through my mac 27″ monitor, which i know isn’t ideal but it’s all i have atm – i’ve done a fair few burns to test on my TV and the text doesn’t come our crisp like in the mov or fcp at all.

  here are the settings i have in FCP:
  frame size: 1440×1080 HD (1440×1080) (16:9)
  pixel aspect ratio: HD (1440×1080)
  field dominance: Upper (odd)
  editing timebase: 25
  quicktime video settings: apple prores 422, quality: 100%

  Will be shown on PAL TV

  if there are any other settings you need to know to help me solve this, let me know.

  i’m probably missing something really basic so, please, if someone can put me out of my misery i would be very grateful.

  thanks.

  Ryan Say replied 15 years, 11 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Rich Rubasch

  September 15, 2010 at 8:58 pm

  Try exporting out of FCP with QT Conversion and scale the movie down to 720 x 480 widescreen Prores 422. Then take that file thru Compressor using just about any DVD encoding setting and see if that doesn’t fix the type. Extra step but works for us on any HD interlaced material going to Compressor for DVD. 720P 60 seems to behave…only the 1080 interlaced stuff mucks up the text on downconverts no matter what we do in Frame Controls in compressor.

  Rich Rubasch
  Tilt Media Inc.
  Video Production and Post
  Owner/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
  https://www.tiltmedia.com
• 

  Ryan Say

  September 16, 2010 at 11:39 am

  Hi Rich

  Thanks for your reply. It was really helpful.

  I tried it and the text is nigh on perfect and the actual footage looks better now, for the most part.

  When I play the DVD back on my widescreen TV there occasionally scan lines (i think that’s what you call them) when you have a dip to colour transition. But it doesn’t happen at each one, which is weird, but I can live with it for now.

  Although,I played it back on my crappy TV in the kitchen and it looks amazing all the way through.

  I’m still pretty new to compressing, HDV to SD and outputting and I find it a challenge. I feel it’s a bit like building Frankenstein’s monster at times.

  I think i really need to get myself a decent monitoring set-up that will limit these problems in the future. As far as I understand, just plugging your HD TV into your iMac won’t cut it though.

  Any thoughts/advice on monitoring?

  Ryan

  PS thanks again for your help

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