Compressor quality on QT Conversion? What settings to use?

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Mathew,
If you are starting with web videos and you will end up in web video, I propose you a different workflow.
You are working with already high compressed material with a particular size, progressive and Square pixels.
With your actual workflow you will degrade a lot the original files.
– You are going from a very compressed format to another very compressed format (DV) and again to H264 or so.
– You are going from a web-size/square pixel movie to another one SD NTSC (or PAL) size/ pixels and them back to the old web-size with square pixels.
You can avoid all this and will improve a lot your final product.
1) The first thing is to try to extract as much as you can from your original .mp4’s.
Use MPEGStreamclip to convert your .mp4 files to 8b Unc. This is the codec that will work the best for this task.
2) Avoid Upscaling/downscaling and change in pixels shape: Export your .mp4 keeping the original size and pixel format. You will get 8b Unc .mov files with the same size of your .mp4s. What you have to do now is to edit in a sequence with the same setting (size/pixels, 8b Unc). When you export you will get an 8b Unc movie that only need to be transcoded to H264 and hung to You-tube.
This way your original picture is just transcoded “pixel by pixel” to 8b Unc and back to H264.
Can you follow the process?
Rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Matthew Shaw]

Hi, thanks for your response!

Okay I am very new at this, so let me tell you exactly what I did and let me know if this is correct.

I used Movie Inspector in Quicktime to check the size of one of my MP4’s.

I didn’t know which “size” you are speaking of (There is “size” and then “data size”) and I didn’t see anything about “Pixel Format.” It showed the following info…

Size: 320 x 240 pixels

Data Size: 7.28 MB

Format: AAC, Stereo (L R), 44.100 kHz
H.264 Decoder, 320 x 240, Millions

Then in MPEGStreamClip, I went to File -> Export to Other Formats.

The format in the dropdown menu listed “Quicktime Movie.” Then I hit the “Options” button and then the “Video Settings” button, then in the “Compression Type” dropdown menu, I selected “Uncompressed 8-bit 4:2:2” and I left the “Frame Rate” dropdown menu on “Current.”

I kept “Frame Size” at “320 x 240 (unscaled)” and I couldn’t find anything that says “Pixel Shape” anywhere.

It said the Quality is “Medium” and would not let me change this.

…Is this all correct?

Then I started up FCP, and went to Final Cut Pro -> Audio/Video Settings and under the “Sequence Preset” dropdown menu, I selected “Uncompressed 8-bit NTSC 48kHz”

Correct?

Now my problem is that when I imported this MOV file into FCP, I received this message:

“The following media files are not optimized for Final Cut Pro.

It is highly recommended that you either recapture the media or use the Media Manager to create new copies of the files to improve their performance for multi-stream playback.”

Did I do something wrong?

The MOV plays back a bit choppy in Quicktime, but it looks and plays fine in the Viewer of FCP. Audio sounds fine too.

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Matthew,
All the web-video formats use Square pixels.

[Matthew Shaw] ”
The format in the dropdown menu listed “Quicktime Movie.” Then I hit the “Options” button and then the “Video Settings” button, then in the “Compression Type” dropdown menu, I selected “Uncompressed 8-bit 4:2:2” and I left the “Frame Rate” dropdown menu on “Current.”
I kept “Frame Size” at “320 x 240 (unscaled)” and I couldn’t find anything that says “Pixel Shape” anywhere. “
Great.
So build an 8b Unc sequence with 320×240 Square Pixels and Field order NONE and edit in that sequence. Why to blow the picture up to downsize it again?
Render the 320×240 movie and convert it to h264.

[Matthew Shaw] “Now my problem is that when I imported this MOV file into FCP, I received this message:
“The following media files are not optimized for Final Cut Pro. “
What did you expected?
Don’t worry about this.
Rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Matthew Shaw]

Oh I see…

So to change the sequence in FCP to 320 x 240, do I do it like this:

Final Cut Pro -> Audio/Video Settings -> Sequence Presets tab -> Edit button… then change the “Aspect Ratio” to “Multimedia Large (4:3)”?

That is the only way I could make the “Frame Size” change to 320 x 240… is this right?

I changed “Pixel Aspect Ratio” to “Square”

And there was nothing that said “Field Order,” but it said “Field Dominance,” so I changed that to “None.” Correct?

Now here is my next question: Some of the other MP4’s I want to have clips of in this sequence are 480 x 360 pixels (according to Quicktime Movie Inspector). So what do I do in that case?

Most of the clips are either 320 x 240 or 480 x 360, but some of them are:

450 x 360, 480 x 266, 480 x 320, 480 x 268

[Rafael Amador]

[Matthew Shaw] “Oh I see…
So to change the sequence in FCP to 320 x 240, do I do it like this:
Final Cut Pro -> Audio/Video Settings -> Sequence Presets tab -> Edit button… then change the “Aspect Ratio” to “Multimedia Large (4:3)”?
That is the only way I could make the “Frame Size” change to 320 x 240… is this right?
I changed “Pixel Aspect Ratio” to “Square”
And there was nothing that said “Field Order,” but it said “Field Dominance,” so I changed that to “None.” Correct? “

Right all this.

If you have many different sizes clips, you need decide the size of your sequence.
Try to find an average size where you don’t need to blow or reduce too much the clips.
Rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Matthew Shaw]

Thanks very much for your help, but I tried this with one file, and exported (using Quicktime Conversion) to H.264, and now there is a big black box around all sides of the video and the video is playing too slow for the audio. The audio is normal but the video is all choppy, lagging behind the audio?

[Rafael Amador]

[Matthew Shaw] “and now there is a big black box around all sides of the video”
Which is the size of your FC sequence?
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Matthew Shaw]

Ahh okay, my sequence had the wrong Frame Size. So I changed it to “320 x 240” and now there is no black box! Thanks!

But still, when I export it to H.264, the playback in Quicktime is choppy. The audio is good but the video is too slow for the audio.

Do I need to change anything else? Like fps or anything?

I did: Final Cut Pro -> Export -> Using Quicktime Conversion

Format: Quicktime Movie

Options button -> Settings button (for Video)

Compression type: H.264

Frame Rate: Current

Key Frames: Every 24 frames

Frame reordering (checked)

Compressor Quality: High

Encoding: Best Quality

Data Rate: Automatic

These are the settings I used but the playback is still choppy(?)