Creating the best quality Blu-Ray possiable

[Bret Williams]

If you don’t care about the barebones menu, just burn your blu-Rays directly from the share function in FCPX. They should look great.

You do have a blu-Ray burner, right?

[Peter Gregg]

Hi

Thanks for your reply .

I have tried that but every time i try to use the share function in fcpx it hangs on 66% i have tried some different workarounds that i have read about on here ,but nothing seems to stop it happening.

Yeah i have a blu-ray burner .

thanks

[Bret Williams]

In toast what compression are you using? You don’t want MPEG 2. You want the other. MP4?

[Peter Gregg]

I am using mpeg4

[Joe Marler]

Your content is being transcoded at least once, and probably something is degrading the image. Do you have an optical drive so you can play the Blu-Ray disk on your Mac? That would verify whether the degradation is visible there or only on the big screen.

What is the FCP X output format that you’re feeding Toast? Can you can play that intermediate file to your projector (say using QuickTime or VLC on a MacBook) and verify it looks OK? Basically you want to see if it went wrong at the output of FCP X or during Toast processing. If the problem happens *before* Toast that’s also easier to experiment with, as you aren’t burning a Blu Ray disk every time and you can experiment with a shorter clip.

Toast has various bit rate and quality options. Did you pick some custom options or just “automatic encoding”?

[Peter Gregg]

When I play back the intermediate on my iMac it looks good but when played on my projector direct from my Mac it’s quiet jumpey ie cars etc are jerky .when played back on bluray the jerky movements are gone . The actually quality (sharpness etc ) is the same .
I am doing it in 4444 XQ in fcpx .

[Joe Marler]

The only thing I can think of is laterally moving objects naturally have some “frame judder”. It is easier to see on a big screen. It’s more noticeable at 24 frames/sec but at 30 (29.97) fps you can sometimes see it. On a small screen it can be there and you won’t notice it as much. It’s possible your Blu Ray player has some kind of de-judder or frame interpolation or video smoothing built in.

You can also add motion compensation when you render the project. FCP X has optical flow smoothing but I’m not sure that’s appropriate. Compressor has a motion compensation function but I haven’t experimented with it.

There are various types of frame interpolation (sometimes called motion interpolation or optical flow). Some newer TV monitors and projectors have it. Likewise Some software players like Cyberlink PowerDVD have it. VLC has it for some codecs, but how to use it and the various parameters aren’t well documented.

If you can see it on the big screen when played from your Mac, but you don’t see it when played from the Blu Ray player, this implies either the player or the Toast software added some kind of motion compensation.

[Peter Gregg]

Thanks

That all makes a lot of sense my projector certainly has motion flow built in but I always have it turned of as it makes films look like home video ( all be it is very smooth )

I am film at 25fps on my camera in pal but when played back on my projector it always says the source is 50p .
Could this be where I am losing some sharpness and Pop ?

[Emma Xia]

Why you need FCPX for Blu-ray burning instead of professional Blu-ray buring tool like cyberlink? I heard from friends that it is the best.

[Bret Williams]

Never heard of it. Is it for Mac? Why would you buy additional software if the software you have does what you need already?