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compressing and GTOP tips/help for very “motion heavy” content
hi folks-
new here and i have hit a stump:
i am editind and authoring to DVD a video for a good friend. he is using it as part of a video installation and it has provided some new challenges to me. the video is only 8 mins long, but loaded with a lot of strobelight type of stuff, as well as very quick, often 1 or 2 frames per, cuts. on top of that, the more lasting cuts are of trees and leaves where thay are all fluttering, etc…
so…my mpeg compression know-how is beingput to the test bigtime. i can’t seem to get a smooth, nice-lloking compression. filesize isn’t really an issue, as the video is short. but quality is.
i have set the GOP to IP at 6 frames.. man, i tried a load of GOP structures.
any tips, advice, etc. for getting good results?
project was cut on fcp and has been compressed via both compressor and inside dvdsp. i exported as a contained uncompressed 8 bit out of fcp.
please help!!
best,
coots -
7 Replies
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Using a GOP size of 6 will give very poor compression, plus we have seen multiple cases where short GOPs cause difficulty in playback on many DVD players. This is because you have more than twice as many I-frames than normal, which are complete images.
Difficult material really needs to be encoded on a high quality hardware-based encoder that supports segment re-encoding to deal with the tough sections.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
IMHO encoding at (9800 minus sound) multipass_VBR with software encoder like CinemacraftEncoder at IBP 12/3 will be look fine.
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thanks, bill.
that’s what i figured. i teted a number of gop structures and found the 15 frame best, in fact. this project was a funny one: depending on the settings selected, one section benefits and one looses. i could not get a uniform output. i ended up suggesting the artist project with his minidv deck for his event and output for him accordingly. aside from the interlace lines, it looks fantastic. he shot on a consumer 3 chip minidv, so the quality followed suit.
quick follow-up questions:
do you have hardware suggestions for both pc and mac? i have avid xpress studio on an hp and the fcp studio on a macbook proo, soon to purchase a desktop for it.
also, tips on future projects of this nature? can they be approached as animation? how about mpeg2 i-frame?
thanks!
cootss -
i ran this through endless encodes on compressor and dvdsp – nothing quite did it. great apps, but definitly not the tools for htis job, i guess.
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Encoders on the PC side: Sonic (3 versions), Optibase, or maybe you can find a used Zapex (very good encoder, company is defunct). There’s not much (or any) hardware available on the Mac side these days.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
Bill, IMHO today is NOT NEED to use hardware encoders.
Today available CCE and proCoder.
CCE can encode 4:3 or 16:9, multipass VBR, use anu source (avi, mov) and Adobe Premiere integration, plus work it with Frameservers. And it’s price much lower than Optibase 🙂?
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I know this is an older post, but hopefully this will help you or someone else in a similar situation.
When you get into heavy film effects and wild edits you need to give the encoder a lot of leeway to analyze the footage and nail down the best encoding for each segment. You won’t be able to get very good results with a hardware encoder unless it can do a bunch of passes to figure out where the tough parts are. I would recommend Cinemacraft’s CCESP as it can do as many as 99 passes to analyze, re-encode, and tweak the tougher parts. Leave the GOP structure open and the encoder will be able to make a few short GOPs where necessary on the tougher quick edits and leave the rest long (15 frame) for efficiency.
The only real catches with CCESP is that it runs on Windows and costs $2000. If you are using an Intel Mac you can run it under Bootcamp just fine. As far as the $2000 part, well that will be worth it once you see the results.
I’ve been very underwhelmed with the results of Compressor…too much macroblocking and pixelization for my tastes especially on saturated stuff and bitrates below 7.
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