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Cinema Craft MP
I’m trying to get a nice MPEG2 compression for DVD using Cinema Craft MP but it’s not exactly meeting my expectations/hopes/dreams & desires.
Here’s my work flow:
– Original footage is 1920x1080p29.97
– I can dump that to tape via firewire 800 to DVCPROHD using an AJHD1400 and downscale using the deck to NTSC ProResHQ 29.97 or use a blackmagic card to do the downscaling and capture using the same codec.
– Or, I can downscale the original 1920×1080 media using After Effects cs4. Resizing in the render queue to NTSC D1 widescreen to ProResHQ 29.97.If I use the deck or capture card to downscale the footage becomes interlaced and looks very soft compared to what’s coming out of after effects, which is progressive.
– I bring in the SD version using any method and use Cinema Craft MP to compress to MPEG2.
– In Cinema Craft MP my settings are,
720×480
29.97
CBR 7600
Multipass, 10
16:9
GOP N15 M3
GOP must have B frames(s)
Append Sequence end code
Progressive Frame
Accept YCbCr signals
Luminance level, 16-235
1.8/2.2 Gamma Correction
Embed DVD Studio Pro Marker Info
Filter, 3
FRAME CONTROLS ARE OFF– The only thing that would change in those settings would be if I’m compressing the SD media from the deck or card, in which case I switch off progressive and set the field dominance to match the source media.
– I bring out the .m2vs, drop them in DVDSP, burn
– the tests are being watched on a bluray player hooked up to a 46″ LEDI’m for the most part happy with Cinema Craft MP (CCE-MP), but there are places where there’s significant noise where I don’t think there should be any. It’s like CCE-MP is adjusting the compression in the middle of a clip and weird lines/jags pop up out of no where ad hang around for while before going away.
Any ideas?
FCP7 (current updates/drivers)
After Effects CS4 (current updates/drivers)
Compressor 3.5
Cinema Craft MP V1.0.42
Blackmagic Studio (current updates/drivers)
Panasonic AJHD1400 deck -
3 Replies
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Some of your workflow seems a bit roundabout. Did you figure this out?
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Somewhat. If a shot had a lot of motion at the head and then not a lot of motion at the tail I think CCE was thinking there was a scene change and the compression would go from good to no-so-good in the middle of a shot. For example, if there was a swish pan to static shot with some people sitting around the compression would hold up in the pan but then the people would get a high compression. To get around this we ended up checking everything in the advanced options which seems to have given us a full-on CBR without any matrices, which is fine for us because our content was short enought to not have to worry about a high bit rate.
As for the work flow, we ended up going with the downscale from HD to SD from After Effects. We had to go through the show and add blur (Fast Blur) to a handful of shots to keep them from wiggling, mainly high contrast shots with thin horizontal lines and subtle movement, but the result is pretty good. Compared to a Blue Planet DVD our AE downscale was much sharper, but if it were up to me, I would have went with a downscale using the deck (AJHD1400). It would have looked softer, but it would have been more consistant, like the Blue Planet DVD.
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The Teranex converters have come down in price, not that Black Magic has purchased them – you might want to consider looking at those.
ian
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