• Compression Techniques

  NTCS MPEG4 converted to PAL Apple ProRes

  Posted by Tomas Diaz velasco on June 27, 2011 at 6:45 pm

  Hi There,

  I am set to edit a large project using FCP in a few weeks time. I already have a lot of the footage (too much if you asked me and the are still shooting!!!) and it happens to be mainly .mts files (my firsts). I been converting these files using Adobe Media Encoder (my first time too) into apple ProRes and have tried some rough edits and i am satisfied with it. however, the film is being shot with several different cameras and I have been provided footage using XDCam codec, Cannon 5D raw files and MPEG 4 files.

  I have combined XDcam footage and ProRes footage in small projects in the past and I decided I will not bother converting these to ProRes. With the Cannon files and some of the MPEG 4s I don’t see any trouble converting them to ProRes and sticking to AME for that purpose. there are also some PAL DV footage from PD150 that I haven’t decided what to do but most likely will just exclude anyway.

  The problem is that a lot of the MPEG 4s where shot at 29.97 fps while all the rest is at 25fps. also these files have at least 2 different dimensions. this is what I have discovered so far in the sea of files I was given and that I expect to be troublesome:

  *MPEG4, 1280 X 720, 29.97 fps, Ambarella AVC encoder (aprently form a Toshiba HDcam)
  *MPEG4, 1940 X 1080, 29.97 fps, AVC coding (from a sony HX1[?])

  The rest of the footage lies happily on an:

  Apple ProRes 422 25fps 1920 X 1080 sequence

  I have tried converting the NTSC to PAL using compressor but my only experience doing this is with DV footage and the results I am getting now are full of artefacts.

  so the question is:

  *how do I convert those MPEG 4s that play 29.97fps into apple ProRes 422 25 fps maintaining good quality?

  and other question in case you think it deserves to be answered is:

  *Is my chosen workflow for all those other formats the best I can do in the circumstances?

  Thank you very much in advance I am working on another project at the moment that occupies most of my time (not ALL since one needs to sleep from time to time) and any suggestions would greatly help to avoid it all becoming unmanageable.

  Tomas

  Tomas Diaz velasco replied 15 years, 1 month ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Craig Seeman

  June 27, 2011 at 6:55 pm

  Please explain what settings you’ve used to convert NTSC to PAL in Compressor.
  Please list version of Compressor as the current version is 4

  Where is says video Settings and you click on the settings button and in the popup that opens, have you changed Frame Rate from Current fps to 25?
• 

  Tomas Diaz velasco

  June 28, 2011 at 11:03 am

  Hi Craig,

  I am running Compressor 3.5 and this is what i have done:

  SETTINGS:
  Other Wrokflows>Advanced Format Conversions>Apple Codecs>Apple ProRes

  INSPECTOR:
  Encoder: Video Settings… Frame Rate 25 fps

  Frame Controls: Resize filter: Best (Statistical prediction)
  Deinterlace: Better (motion adaptive)
  Rate Convertion: Better (Motion Compesated)

  I played with the settings a little and those where the settings that gave me best result except for a little, how you call it, jittering. Also i get some issues with slightly distorted image perhaps due to Pixel aspect ratio? (i am a bit confused with the MPEG resolutions i got) I know i haven’t made enough tests but thought that maybe someone has already had this problem and knows of a solution also because all i can do is try and try till i get something acceptable but don’t really understand what i am doing.

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