Compressing for SpotExpress delivery

[Craig Seeman]

It looks like they don’t provide any info either!
https://spotxpress.coxmedia.com/

[Craig Seeman]

I use DGFastchannel for spot delivery. Can you link to SpotExpress web page and/or PDF with their specs?

You haven’t given a clue about their specs or your workflow so barring psychic powers it’s hard to venture much more than wild guesses.

[Bryce Leverich]

Thanks,
SpotExpress needs the video in a QT container, so here are their QT accepted codecs:

QuickTime Apple Animation
QuickTime Apple BMP
QuickTime Apple Cinepak
QuickTime Apple Component Video
QuickTime Apple DV/DVCPRO
QuickTime Apple Graphics
QuickTime Apple H.261
QuickTime Apple Motion JPEG A
QuickTime Apple Motion JPEG B
QuickTime Apple MPEG-4
QuickTime Apple Photo JPEG
QuickTime Apple Planar RGB
QuickTime Apple PNG
QuickTime Apple TGA
QuickTime Apple TIFF
QuickTime Apple Video
QuickTime Avid DNxHD
QuickTime HDV
QuickTime IMX
QuickTime BlackMagic 10-bit
QuickTime BlackMagic RGB 10-bit
QuickTime DVCPro 50
QuickTime DVCPro 100/HD
QuickTime H.263
QuickTime H.264
QuickTime Intel Indeo Video 4.4
QuickTime JPEG 2000
QuickTime Omneon
Spotexpress does not have it’s own website (strange I know, but according to tech support, it does not exist) but the mother company is VideoShip, https://videoship.com/

They require 720×480 or 720×486, 16bit audio and a max file size of 300mb.

I am using FCP export with QT conversion, but I also have Episode pro and Compressor.

Bryce Leverich

[Craig Seeman]

Found it. It would be most helpful if you would have provided this along with the proper name of the service.

It’s SpotXPress, not SpotExpress.

https://coxmedia.com/cfc/assets/pdf/SpotXPress_MP.pdf

[Bryce Leverich]

You are probably right. My bad. Crazy companies with their “X’s”. Thanks for putting up with me 🙂

Bryce Leverich

[Craig Seeman]

It seems they don’t have specs for slate and black as DG does. As you note .mov cuts a broad swath and they only have size limit rather than peak data rate ceiling.

300MB is rather hefty.
What’s your source codec in FCP timeline?
You could probably deliver H.264 at something obscene like 50mbps and still be under 300MB for a 30 second spot.

Interesting that they have Black Magic 10 Bit but not “old fashioned” 8 or 10 bit Uncompressed. Heck they even accept DVPro100/HD. It looks like they’ll accept many timeline codecs as is. It seems possible to do no compression at all in some cases.

[Bryce Leverich]

We shoot in DVPRO-HD, timeline is uncompressed 10-bit. I am exporting an h264 at 50mbps as we speak.

Bryce Leverich

[Bryce Leverich]

H264 at 50mbps looked great… only problem is it took over 30 minutes to encode. With our deadlines and the amount of spots we put out in one day, we can’t encode that long.

I am going to go ahead and try some other codecs, and try to figure this out via trial and error. I really appreciate your help!

Bryce Leverich

[Bryce Leverich]

Thanks, I will try that. Again, I appreciate all your help!

Bryce Leverich

[Craig Seeman]

[Bryce Leverich] “it took over 30 minutes to encode”
G5 with one core, MacMini with 1 core, MacPro 8 core with QMaster set to 4 instances?
Time is a meaningless number without details.

As a auto mechanic might say, “I can’t fix your vehicle on the phone. For all I know you’re riding a tricycle.”

Multi Core Mac use QMaster.
Try encoding on Episode using 2 Pass.

You could go with the “old reliable” MPEG2 Program stream (They mention .mpg as acceptable)