Any way to get broadcast quality from a Rip?

[Dunwoody Lampton]

Squared5.com
Download the free M-peg Streamclip converter.

Apple.com
Purchase and download Quicktime M-peg 2.

Both must be used together.

Never had a problem or any complaints from
clients about quality.

Good luck.

[13]

[Dan Barter] “It seems strange to me that there wouldn’t be a way to get the actual digital footage from the DVD, since it’s, well, digital.”

Yes it is digital, but it is still compressed. All video on DVD is compressed. You can try mpeg stream clip, but to get the best results I always say get your hands on the original masters.

If the place decided to do it in house you will have top have the old place hand over originals anyway.

[Dan Barter]

I’ll give Streamclip a try, thanks. I’m sure I’ve got the mpeg-2 quicktime extension already. I think that came with FCP, but I’m make sure.

The quality was terrible with DVDxDV. Any thoughts on compressor? Will that also convert VOB files to something editable with FCP?

Dan…

[Dan Barter]

Ultimately, I expect that’s what I’ll end up having to do. I was more or less trying to convince them that with the masters, they can do it in-house without a whole lot of expensive equipment.

Thanks,

Dan…

[Adam Smith]

Whatever ripping software you find, it’ll never give you better quality than what’s been put on the disk… obviously some DVD footage can look pretty dang good, it’s all about how much time and effort was taken in the DVD encoding process.

Perhaps an easy step would be to find out how the post house is producing your DVDs… a good 2-pass encode should look a lot better than a fast encode or disk created on a realtime DVD burner. The tradeoff is more time (and probably money) required to make the DVDs, but the results could be much more favorable.

-Adam

—
Video Photographer / Avid Editor
Maximus Media Inc.

[Dan Barter]

Adam,

Presuming they’d tell me how they build the DVD, is a 2 pass encode something that I can do on my desktop in order to produce an acceptable output? I’ve read that there are a lot of folks bringing this stuff in-house now and producing some very fine product. Obviously, I’ve got a lot to learn here, but can a simple in-house set up produce the professional quality of an out-sourced video house.

I expect, by your job title, you’re going to tell me “not a chance!” 🙂

Dan…

[13]

[Dan Barter] “can a simple in-house set up produce the professional quality of an out-sourced video house. “

Of course, it all depends on if the in house people have the same level of talent skills, and resources they need.

The fact that a editor is employed solely one company, or whether they are employed by a actual production company. It is the talent of the editor and the resources that he has to use that make the difference.

That is why many places do do there own internal video production, they don’t need enough to invest what it would take.

[Adam Smith]

[Dan Barter] “Presuming they’d tell me how they build the DVD, is a 2 pass encode something that I can do on my desktop in order to produce an acceptable output?”

Sure thing, if you have the software for it and some time.

Up until I got this fine MacPro I used TMPG Xpress on my PC for encoding video for DVD… it only cost me around $100 and it worked like a charm (this was on my home system). I’m not sure what to recommend for OSX, as my Mac at work is going on 4 years old and here at home I now have FCS2 with Compressor and DVDSP, but I’m sure there are numerous products out there these days for encoding MPEG2. Perhaps MPEG Streamclip by Squared 5?

With 2-pass encoding, the software first analyzes the video and takes notes on portions of the movie where more or less data will be required to display an acceptable image. The second pass then encodes the file, using the first pass info to apply a more tailored compression plan. Depending on the software, you can also have control over i-frame creation, motion detection/compensation, scene-change detection, and more general speed-vs-quality type settings.

The major downside of course, is time. Whereas a realtime burner will be done in approximately the run time of the project +15 mins or so, encoding MPEG2 can take you anywhere from 2-10x realtime just to create the files, depending on your hardware and encoding settings. Plus you gotta figure you’ll want to make a nice menu in your authoring program, then burn disks, and things can sorta snowball on you… =)

To what extent do you plan to work in-house? If you just need better quality video to work with for your internal projects, perhaps you can ask the post-house to provide full resolution movie files on data-DVD instead of or along with your DVD videos?

—
Video Photographer / Avid Editor
Maximus Media Inc.