Best compression product

[Daniel Low]

The only other products worth considering are Digigami MegaPEG.X https://www.digigami.com/megapeg/ or Episode from Telestream.

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[Kris A. wotipka]

Do you want to create a DVD or create a FILE? You mention DVD but then you say that it will be viewed and played back on a Mac? Why not just create a high resolution Quicktime file? You can use “just about” any codec / compression ratio that fits your format. The whole thing can be sent FedEx via a USB type drive. Just a thought.

kw

kris@wotipka.com
Image maker

[Magda Fernandez]

Thanks, Daniel. I’ll look into these suggestions. If you, or any other reader, care to share your thoughts on the strengths and limitations of these products, I’d really appreciate it.

[Magda Fernandez]

Hi Kris. The protocol in the art world is to send DVD samples that are viewable from computer drives. Most curators, many of whom are not tech savvy, would not bother with artist samples in a portable USB hard drive, even if the larger files better represent the video.

Whatever DVD sample I submit has to look outstanding, otherwise my exhibition proposal won’t stand a chance.

As usual, it’s the compression that’s the rub. So I’m looking for recommendations from all the pro readers in the Cow for the best Mac-compatible compression product out there for compressing my HD shorts onto DVDs.

If my exhibition proposal is accepted, I would have the liberty of setting up the projection of my videos to my specifications. I guarantee you I’d use anything but DVDs! Most likely I’d use either my HD projector with a Mac-Pro station or a blu-ray player.

Charlotte Warner

[Daniel Low]

Ok. What I think you are saying here is that you don’t want the curators having to copy files from a DVD disc onto their hard drives?

If that is the case and you want to deliver a typical DVD then you will be limited to standard definition only. I.E. 720 not 1920.

That 1920×1080 MPEG-2 M2V file you have generated may play back fine on your Mac Pro but it’s unlikely to play well on an older Mac and it certainly won’t playback from any DVD.

Your choices therefore are to deliver a 1920×1080 file that will need to be played back from a drive, either the curators hard drive, after being copied from DVD, or from a portable USB drive as suggested by Kris.

OR

You take your 1920×1080 source file and do a top quality transcode to SD MPEG-2 with compressor, then author it to a DVD with menus, if you like. This will then play as typical DVD would when the Curators insert it. With good quality HD source and compressor doing the transcode to widescreen SD, it will look great.

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[Magda Fernandez]

Thank you, Daniel. You’ve answered an important concern of mine: that for reliable DVD playback of my file, I need to compress my HD sample to an SD format.

And you’re also right–I sure don’t want the curators to copy my sample videos onto their hard drives. I simply want them to pop my DVD into their computer drive, so that it activates their DVD Player (or equivalent) to play my compressed (but high quality) video sample.

You mention that I should use Compressor. However, my attempts to downconvert to SD with Compressor have produced lousy results. This is why I’m asking if there are better compression products out there for what I’m trying to do.

Do you still recommend Cinema Craft Encoder, Digigami MegaPEG.X, or Episode, and if so, is one better than the other?

Thanks for sticking with me on this question.

[Daniel Low]

Compressor should give you excellent results, there must be something not quite right with your settings.

To start with, what does you source content consist of? Is it Video? Scans of paintings/drawings? AfterEffects? 3d? etc.

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[Magda Fernandez]

Okay, Daniel. My source content are videos that are, on average, about 12 minutes long. All of my videos are silent. I use FCP as my editing software, and about 95% of the clips consist of Shake-composited footage. I use lots of cross-dissolves and transitions between clips, too. In FCP the video is in animation format (since it’s not lossy), set to 1920 x 1080 and 29.97.

When I’ve tried to export my animation file to Compressor to downconvert to SD, the quality was hideous, and some of the transitions didn’t work. So I stopped trying that approach, and came up with a combination that works on my computer, at least, and looks great, and that fits onto a DVD:

I exported my animation file to Compressor, created a beautiful AppProRes(HQ) Interlaced file (approx. 22 GB). Then I imported that AppProRes .mov file into DVD Studio Pro, and converted that into an .m2v file, which I then burned onto a 4.74 DVD. To do all this, I used the settings recommended in Ken Stone’s website, and I applied many of the workarounds listed in the Cow for dealing with the gamma shift issue in QT movies.

Although my decent-looking DVD file does not play on my standalone DVD player, it plays pretty well on my DVD Player on my Mac Pro. There is some very minor stuttering that I can live with in the DVD samples (but no seizing), and the color and resolution look pretty good. All of the transitions work properly, too.

Is there a way to achieve the same results with a Compressor SD file?

[Daniel Low]

How were the videos shot? Format? SD or HD?

Progressive or interlaced?

What method and settings, in detail please, did you use to downconvert your animation in compressor?

Did you use the high quality settings in the Frame Controls and Geometry Controls in the inspector tab?
Did you deinterlace at the highest quality settings? –
Not using those controls is the most likely reason the downconvert looks bad, or that your expectations for SD material may be too high?

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Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying ‘thanks’ is free!

[Magda Fernandez]

Hi Daniel. I shoot my videos with my Sony HDR-FX1 in 1440 x 1080i. I capture in FCP 6 with AppProRes HQ preset at 29.97. I composite most of that footage in Shake and export it back into FCP in animation format at 29.97. Back in FCP I assemble my clips and apply lots of FCP and VFX filters. I then export the completed, unrendered animation file directly into Compressor. In Compressor, I tried the SD High Quality Encodes over the Fast ones. The results were unacceptable. But the HD Encodes work beautifully. But, as I explained, I need to create a high-quality HD to SD .m2v file.

So I searched the forums to find solutions. What I found were many forum entries such as mine, and in those cases the experts pretty much recommend solutions such as blu-ray (which wouldn’t work in my case), or Cinema Craft Encoder, Episode, etc. The conclusion in most of those entries is that Compressor is not up to the task of creating high-quality compressions from HD into SD, and that there are better compression products.

I’ve accepted that, and am now asking for comparative reviews of those better compression products from folks who use them, so that I can make a more informed choice.

I’m curious, since you seem to be promoting Compressor, are you suggesting that there won’t be much of a quality difference between HD to SD Compressor results, versus the same attempts with Cinema Craft Encoder, Episode, etc.?