Desparate – Two problems using FCP to Compressor to DVDSP

[Kris Merkel]

Tim,

yes send a sample. I’d like to see it.

kmerkel(at)imeast(dot)net

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Timothy Anderson] “If I got a sample of one of the title cards to you as a 4 sec. QT (it’s 7.5MB or so), would you be willing to see what results you could get in compressing it into MPEG-2 using Compressor?”

Please do. You can upload files right here to the cow. Zip the file and then click on the little disk icon above the text box.

Jeremy

[John Fishback]

Have you tried Michael’s suggestion of using Frame Controls? In Compressor’s Inspector click to turn on Frame Controls and set the Resize Filter to Best. This will do the best possible scaling of the image. It will also increase the encode time significantly. Try a test of your graphics to see if it helps. I also recommend BitVice (and Video Purifier (which does excellent scaling, too).

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.8 QT7.6.4 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.2, Motion 4.0.2, Comp 3.5.2, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.2)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO & 192 Digital I/O, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[Timothy Anderson]

Ok cool – thank you – I uploaded via ZIP a sample QT of one of the title cards.

907_loopdiloopsample.mov.zip

Thanks for your time in advance. Please keep in mind I will be using Compressor for the the MPEG-2 and it will be part ultimately of a feature-length project with a TRT of 89 mins. Also, I cannot use 2 PASS VBR BEST setting due to the pulsing problem it creates later in the project (regular TWO PASS is fine). I am running Compressor 3.5.1 and FCP 7 and will be burning an NTSC SD DVD in DVDSP.

All of my MPEG-2 attempts with the titles result in muddy, blocky, pixelated, just poor quality titles in the sequence.

Thank You!
Tim

[Timothy Anderson]

Hi Kris,

Uploaded a sample QT of the title cards giving me the trouble.

907_loopdiloopsample.mov.zip

Keep in mind I will be using Compressor > DVDSP for the SD DVD and it will be part of a feature-length project.

Tim

[Jeremy Garchow]

To be honest, that title is aliased already. I think it could look better from the start.

i think there’s a flaw in the way you are going from illustrator to PNG to Motion. You know that Motion can import illustrator files, right? THere are some caveats to it, like it must be saved as PDF compatible, and it has to be one layer per document as Motion will flatten a layered ai file, but it does work. At any rate:

Here’s what I got from Compressor:

https://f1.creativecow.net/908/compressor-for-ldil

And Bitvice:

https://f1.creativecow.net/909/bitvice-for-ldil

You tell me.

Jeremy

[Timothy Anderson]

Hey Jeremy,

First of all, thank you very much for your time and efforts to help me – I really appreciate it.

I checked both out and it seems your results in Compressor mirror mine – I think it is just the best Compressor can do (sigh). However, I do think the BitVice result was an improvement – most noticeably in the preservation of the red, and on the O’s and d – I just don’t have BitVice – maybe I will demo for the time being…

As for the Motion workflow, actually the titles were brought into Motion as raw Illustrator .ai files – I will double check to make sure they weren’t multi-layered and .PDF compatible, however. I was mistaken about the .PNG part – the only titles to come through to me that were .PNGs were for the DVD Menu. The sample QT I put up was a raw transparent Illustrator file exported as HD ProRes 4444 at ‘best’ everything out of Motion…

I just don’t think Compressor can do a better job and BitVice does it slightly better, although both leave a bit to be desired obviously…

Thank You very much though…

Tim

[Kris Merkel]

What font are you using?

Open the sample in QT and then reduce(scale) the size of the window to the minimum amount 478×269.

Do you see anything wrong with the text. This is essentially what is happening to your file, except on a much simpler level, when you run it through compressor.

You can get it to look a little better, but, some things just do not compress well. Like red text with a thin sharp shadow over black.

I am going to see if i can get you a cleaner output but I will need your specs.

[Timothy Anderson]

The font is Myriad Pro – Bold Condensed with a drop shadow (multiply, x-offset 2, y-offset 0, 1 pixel blur, at 70% opacity), and inner shadow (multiply, 28% opacity, 11 pixel blur, edge). All done in Illustrator as one layer then brought into Motion as an .ai file.

I understand I may be hitting a wall of sorts in MPEG-2 compression ability of Compressor for these titles, but if you could achieve any better results that would be awesome.

In terms of specs, I am not sure what specs specifically (i.e. project specs, FCP, etc.?) you are looking for that aren’t already in the thread – could you tell me?

Thank you very much for your help and time – it is much appreciated.

Tim

[Kris Merkel]

Thanks Tim,

I just needed your font specs. I have 2 tight deadlines this morning and an edit with a client later. I will try to squeeze something out this afternoon. In the meantime you should experiment with some other colors and try to smooth the edges of your font and shadow.

If I remember correctly, from reading Ben Waggoner’s book on compression. Hard straight edges are a difficult to compress.

Is the text moving?

Also this now might be a better time to move this thread over to the compression forum since it now is out of the realm of FCP.