Compressing to WMV for web – poor quality

[David Roth weiss]

[Angie373] “I have a standard 720 X 240 NTSC DV (0.9) After Effects CS3 project”

Angie,

There’s nothing standard about 720×240 NTSC DV — standard NTSC DV is 720×480. What’s that all about???

In addition, outputting your final comp from AE as a DV file is knocking down the pristine uncompressed graphics you’ve created in AE to highly compressed DV video in 4:1:1 color space, which means its throwing away vast amounts of information. Output to animation codec, DVCPro50, or 8-bit or 10-bit uncompressed before encoding to WMV and you will see a vast improvement to you titles and graphics.

David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY

[Angie373]

Thanks for the help. Sorry about the error in dimensions – that was just typo on my part. The thing is I have to work with my boss on this. He does his video work in premiere – in NTSC DV is 720×480. Which he then outputs in one shot to WMV 320 X 240 for the web. So from me – he wants it in NTSC DV 720 X 480 which HE will then import into his project and do the final WMV output. He’s not about to switch his workflow pattern unfortunately – So…. can i follow your steps above using the animation codec you suggested and give him that output and when he renders to a final WMV will the graphic quality be better still? Thx again for help.

[David Roth weiss]

Well Angie, the fact is it will only be “somewhat” better, but not nearly what it could be. When your boss renders your material in the animation codec to DV it will put a big hit on your pristine graphics, but not as much as the 2nd compression hit which I think is inherent in your present workflow.

For the record, your boss should know that most pros who work in DV use a workflow that allows them to finish in an uncompressed timeline in order to preserve their uncompressed titles and graphics. If he’s not doing that he’s never going to achieve the quality he’s capable of producing.

David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY

[Angie373]

So there’s not really a way to preserve my quality some then and basically it all goes back down to whether he adjusts his workflow a little. Ug. I took one look at what his output did to my project and wanted to cry. Thing is he gets sharp video quality – its the effects and graphics that suffer of course. So it’s hard for someone to understand why they should adjust their workflow rather than there being a way for you to accommodate their routine. I’ll see what I can do. I’m an experienced designer and familiar with a lot of platforms but video is new to me so learning compression and how to preserve quality is the first and most important step for me. Thanks for the help.

[Craig Seeman]

I’m not sure I fully understand your workflow. In this case is it the After Effects work coming last? Is it edited material you’re getting? At this stage is all that done and you’re now just acting as compressionist?

As After Effects person you might want to deliver in Animation or a higher quality video codec. You might consider 8 or 10 bit Uncompressed or, if there are other limitations, even DVCPro 50.

If you’re receiving edited material to work on ask that they edit in 8 or 10 bit uncompressed or DVCPro50.

Are they taking your nice graphics work and mashing it into DVCAM? Ugh is right. Even if their source is DV/DVCAM they can work in a better quality codec to preserve the graphics and give you a better source for final encode. The only reason I can see for them working in DV/DVCAM is they either have system limitations or convenience is more important than quality. Generally though most systems that can handle DVCAM should be able to handle the bump in resources to use DVCPro50.

[David Roth weiss]

[Craig Seeman] “I’m not sure I fully understand your workflow. In this case is it the After Effects work coming last? Is it edited material you’re getting? At this stage is all that done and you’re now just acting as compressionist?”

Craig,

I was also a bit confused about this, but my guess is that Angie is compositing title sequences using the boss’s edited video, animation, and graphics in AE, and then her boss is cutting that back into his edited DV timeline. Its sounds to me as if her boss thinks that he’s tied to DV simply because he started with DV. Unfortunately, Angie’s work is getting mangled and the boss is unhappy, meanwhile unbeknownst to him, he’s sabotaging everything.

David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY

[Clare Adams]

I sorry to butt in on this posting, but reading this is helping me to underatnd my own probs better as I’m very unfamiliar with compression tpyes and how ordering workflow for best graphics etc.

Am I understanding this right ( in relation to above problem) that when working with graphics in a dv based project (no matter the NLE system) you must first export as uncompressed then import it and export it as wmv then? (to get the graphics looking less jaggy)