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AE animation isnt same quality when its on DVD…
hya and thanks in advance for the help.
I’ve tried as many different renders as possible and have looked at loads of forums with no final answer i can rely on.
I’ve created a 5minute animation from scratch. it contains mostly photoshop layers that i then animate, in addition to some AE effects.
my issue is that when i render out my animation (in small sections) and use the Animation codec with million colour+, it looks perfect on quicktime. but as soon as i author the animation on a finalized DVD (with Ulead video studio) the animation has noise in it, the quality isnt perfect, and the movement is choppy and bumpy at times.
WHAT DO I NEED TO DO TO ACTUALLY GET A GOOD RENDER? I’VE EVEN TRIED TO TAKE THE ANIMATION CODEC RENDERS INTO PREMIERE AND EXPORT A DV-PAL FROM THERE WITH NO CHANGES…
my project is 32bit depth, and the compositions are all DV-PAL (not wide screen) 25fps.
thanx for the help.
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13 Replies
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Your render is fine. It’s the DVD compression that doesn’t look so great. DVDs are all compressed to the MPEG-2 codec. That codec is lossy, meaning it shows quality loss.
The only way to improve the quality of DVDs is to start with high-quality source (Animation or 10-bit) and improve the MPEG-2 compression. You do that by compressing 2-pass Variable Bitrate (VBR) with a high date rate (maybe 7) when you compress to MPEG-2. Your DVD authoring app may not let you do that — you may have to use Compressor or Squeeze.
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you may get better answers on a dvd forum, but generally, a good workflow for dvd is the following:
1. render out to a high quality format. lossless animation is good, uncompressed formats are also good.
2. take that render to a separate compression utility like compressor or sorenson squeeze, etc., to compress to mpeg2. they will do a better job than rendering straight to mpeg2 from ae and usually do a better job than dvd burning apps…
3. take that to the dvd burning software to burn the dvd….
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
you lot have just made my daY!!! this is an explanation i’ve been waiting and looking for, for a long time now!!! i knew it coulnt be the loseless file because it didnt lose any quality!! so basically i need to get compressor or squeez? are there any other good softwares that do the same or are these the top ones?
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!
CREATIVE COW RULESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
david
thanx for the help.
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Compressor comes with Final Cut Studio on the Mac only.
Squeeze is cross-platform.
Not sure of other options. -
this isn’t quite the holy grail… remember mpeg-2 is lossy compression, so you will still lose some quality, but using a compression utility that can do 2 pass vbr should help a lot.
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
Cinemacraft is what we use here, and it does a pretty awesome job. They provide a few dedicated turnkey solutions for big-budget facilities ($75,000 compression workstation anyone?) but they also have a couple of software only solutions priced at $58 and $1950.
The more expensive software solution (SP2) provides additional options such as the ability to run more than 2 passes, but I believe the basic version uses the same compression engine… There are trials available of both and you can read more at their site:
https://www.cinemacraft.com/eng/index.html
This is a Windows only solution… but it works in Parallels or Boot Camp if you’re on an Intel Mac.
Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
exxceelllent.
so correct me if im wrong, but i need to get one of these softwares, and in there import my losseless animation and compress it to an MPEG-2 with 2vbr?
thanx again guys
thanx for the help.
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Yes.
Procoder and Procoder Express can also be good on Windows), and Bitvice (slow but nice looking results) and Digigami Megapeg can produce good results too on Mac.
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yes… then import that mpeg-2 in to the dvd burning software.
there may be some settings that will need to the same for both the mpeg-2 compressing and the dvd software… things like progressive frames and widescreen, may need to be set at compression time and when burning the dvd…
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
[david lieberman] “import my losseless animation and compress it to an MPEG-2 with 2vbr? “
If by 2 VBR you mean 2 pass then yes. With VBR you will be able to choose a minimum, average and maximum bitrate. Generally you don’t want the maximum to go much higher than 8Mbps (the buffer on SD DVD players can’t stream more than 11-12Mbps without choking, and that includes audio streams so give yourself some headroom). As for the average you can set that in the 6-7Mbps range. And I personally think the minimum shouldn’t go below 3Mbps.
With multiple passes your encoder will go back over the encoded footage looking for areas that have become distorted due to fast motion/noise/anything the mpeg-2 encoder has trouble with and re-encoding those areas with a higher bit rate. Any areas that don’t require a high bit rate (such as frames of solid color, like black) will use a lower bit rate.
Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA
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