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Cutting a trailer from DVD source of SD program for You Tube – best workflow?
I can’t go back to the DVCam source tapes, so I am planning to do an MPEG Streamclip conversion of material from a DVD of the finished program and cut the trailer in FCP 6.
The You Tube video of about 7 minutes will be H.264/AAC in a .mp4 container as recommended, but I’m not sure what project settings to use.
Should I convert the mpeg2 to Quicktime, cut and render in Pro Res and then export to Compressor for encoding with the You Tube settings (Fast Open and Deinterlacing turned on}? Is that too much recompression? If so, what are my options?
Thank you for your thoughts.
Jayasri (Joyce) Hart
Los Angeles, USA
htp://home.earthlink.net/~hartfilms -
15 Replies
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Hi Jasyasri,
With MPGStreamclip, convert the MPEG-2 to Prores or Apple 8b uncompressed.
Size: 856×480.
Deinterlace while converting.
rafael -
Thank you, Rafael. That helps a lot.
Jayasri (Joyce) Hart
Los Angeles, USA
htp://home.earthlink.net/~hartfilms -
Well, that size is correct if the video is 16×9.
If the picture is 4×3, the size should be: 640×480.
rafael -
if you are not doing any further colour grading,
you could convert to Prores LT
there would be next to no difference in image quality.but then again, Prores422 would not be too hard on your system.
nick
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Thanks for the tip, Nick. Yes, I might have to do some color grading if any material from the existing trailer needs to be incorporated. I’m going to start with Apple 8-bit Uncompressed, one of Rafael’s suggestions. Never worked with that conversion in this workflow, so I want to see what it’s like. I have only 6GB RAM memory on an 8-core Mac Pro, so I’ll have to render as I go along. Will report back on my experience.
Jayasri (Joyce) Hart
Los Angeles, USA
htp://home.earthlink.net/~hartfilms -
Yes, Rafael. I guessed that you were thinking 16×9 since that’s what all videos are now. This dates back to early 2000s and is 4×3 ie. 640×480. Thanks for the caveat.
Jayasri (Joyce) Hart
Los Angeles, USA
htp://home.earthlink.net/~hartfilms -
8bit uncompressed is total overkill.
you are making things difficult for yourself for no real benefit.Prores is the way to go.
even if you do convert to Uncompressed, you should not need to render unless the footage is in a non-compatible timeline, in which case, why do it??
nick
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My main worry was the amount of recompression involved in the workflow, so I thought starting with an 8-bit Uncompressed project would help. Rafael, can you weigh in with your reason for including that suggestion along with Pro Res? Thanks!
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8/10b Uncompressed are the only codec that won’t produce further re-compression.
If you were editing HD, i wouldn’t recommend that codec due to the big files you would get.
Working with a 7 minutes 8b Unc clip shouldn’t be any problem unless you have your media on a FW400 HD o so.
DVDs MPEG-2 are 8b/420, so the perfect codec for this conversion would be an 8b Unc 420, but doesn’t exist.
8b Unc 422 is the closet to the perfect codec.
rafael -
Thank you, Nick and Rafael. I converted to 8-bit Uncompressed for the reasons you give, Rafael, saved to an internal RAID volume, and since the cut ended up even shorter, processing was no problem. What is interesting is that a same-as-source self-contained QT export from FCP 6 ended up looking better compressed to mp4/H.264 in Squeeze than “Export to Compressor”–and produced a smaller file. I used CBR Max datarate 2500 for both. You Tube is processing. I’ll know the final result soon.
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