DVCPRO 59.94 export settings?

Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

DVCPRO 59.94 export settings?

Posted by Aryn Leigh on December 12, 2013 at 8:00 am

It’s the eleventh hour here and I’m exporting a bunch of our films to be professionally authored by our DVD vendor back east.

Now- We’re editing in a DVCPRO 59.94 720p timeline, in FCP 7, and I was told by our DVD guy that “Either DVCPro or ProRes is fine” to export for him.

When I export an uncompressed QT file, then compress in compressor to DVCPro, (I’m essentially just stripping the file of it’s FCP container, right?) the final clip looks extremely degraded.

But when I export straight out of FCP using “quicktime conversion”, things look pretty crisp. Is this the correct way to export and retain maximum quality? And why is this?

I also have ProRes 29.97i 1920×1080 footage that I’ve exported as Self-contained, then compressed in compressor, and the results look surprisingly clean, with no generation loss.

Why does the DVCPro file look so lossy when taken into Compressor, but ProRes does not?

Thanks!

Aryn Leigh replied 12 years, 4 months ago 2 Members · 4 Replies
4 Replies

Aryn Leigh
December 12, 2013 at 5:48 pm

Yes! DVCPRO HD.

Actually, the best looking footage ended up being the DVCPRO codec, when exported at “Quicktime conversion” settings. I initially exported at as a self-contained and then compressed to ProRes, and it actually looked terribly blocky.

I guess using compressor is not the way to go when retaining quality then, correct?

Thanks,

AL
Aryn Leigh
December 12, 2013 at 7:45 pm

Actually, no, this is old tape footage that was brought in several years ago from an Aja Kona card as DVCPRO HD 59.94 720p.

Sorry- there was no DVCPRO footage captured or compressed. It was all DVCPRO HD, and I was exporting at these settings:

1. Self-contained, then compressed in compressor to ProRes (looked degraded)
2. Quicktime conversion at original settings (720p 59.94 DVCPRO) (looked really clean).

I was just wondering why the latter worked so well and compressing to pro res did not…

Thanks!
John Fishback
December 12, 2013 at 10:48 pm

Why not simply use your self-contained DVCPro HD master. You gain nothing but size by going to ProRes. And you said your DVD guy was good with the DVCPro (HD). Send one to him and have him confirm it’s good to go.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz, 16 GB RAM, OS 10.8.4, QT10.1, Kona 3, Dual Cinema 23, ATI Radeon HD 5870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.3, Motion 4.0.3, Comp 3.5.3, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.3)
FCP-X 10.0.9, Motion 5.0.7, Compressor 4.0.7

Pro Tools HD 10 w SYNC IO & 192 Digital I/O, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec DSP Monitors, Prima CDQ120 ISDN
Aryn Leigh
December 13, 2013 at 12:11 am

Thanks~

I am creating a “quicktime conversion” file because he doesn’t have FCP on his system- but the DVCPRO HD file looks great, so I’ll go with that.

I’d love to know though why there is so much generation loss when I export a self-contained, then compress in compressor; (Even keeping the same DVCPROHD codec. My intention was just to strip the file of it’s FCP container, so that our DVD folks could read it without having to read an FCP file.)

Thanks again!

AL

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