Exasperated with Transcoding – What’s the Secret?

[Craig Seeman]

You MUST use closed GOP for DVD for “cue points.”

[Andres Lopez-Ovejero] “and the CompressHD. I don’t know if I do enough H.264 work to justify the speed

It’s rare I hear anyone saying don’t do enough H.264 work to justify speed. H.264 is ubiquitous. True non for DVD but it’s used in Blu-ray and I’ve even used it for broadcast delivery on occasion. Some VOD situations call for H.264 Transport Streams as well.

[Andres Lopez-Ovejero] “quite frankly, I resent that I have to pay more money for something I feel like I should be able to do in software.”

If speeds important you’ll be a long way off on that. “Software” ALWAYS involves hardware. Matrox MAX even beats Virtual Cluster encoding on multicore Macs. You want faster you can get it if set up a multicomputer cluster. Episode Engine running on several computer (and many thousands of dollars for the software and the computers) is fast. Your computer is hardware. Encoding always involves hardware. It all depends on what you want to tie up to do the encode.

[Andres Lopez-ovejero]

The first two are theirs

https://www.flickr.com/photos/andres_mlo/sets/72157626407552440/

it resized the images a bit, what is a better image host?

So you see, I have poor color reproduction, some haloing around the letters and artifacting around the ‘museum of arts and design’ logo element.

the VBR thing is something i will keep in mind, but in this situation, despite clustering I had a set data rate that stuck to.

besides clearly higher production values, it looks like the other company set key frames at 15 bumped the data rate up to 5259 (??) and only did a single pass (?). also they put it at 23.98 FPS which we were specifically asked not to do, but that would technically increase their per frame data rate. although that can’t be the answer.

I’ll try running the settings over the weekend.

[Craig Seeman]

[Jeff Greenberg] “Drop the h.264 into the Compressor Preset window – you’ll get their exact formula.”

Or for more detail VideoSpec
https://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/video/videospec.html

[Craig Seeman]

[Andres Lopez-Ovejero] “what is a better image host?”

You can post images directly to the COW.

[Jason Brown]

Good points Craig, it reminds me of something I heard Aahron (sp?) say a long time ago–u can use a shoe to hammer a nail, but a hammer does it faster and better. Right tool for right job.

Craig, r u gonna be at nab? I’d like to meet u, I’m a fan! 🙂

[Andres Lopez-ovejero]

thanks. unfortunately the images were over 500KB per. so it wouldn’t allow me to upload them. my mistake, I should have mentioned that.

[Jeff Greenberg]

[Andres Lopez-Ovejero] “it resized the images a bit, what is a better image host?
“
A file host – not an image host; dropbox, mobileme, yousend it. Something that leaves the file alone.

[Andres Lopez-Ovejero] “besides clearly higher production values, it looks like the other company set key frames at 15 bumped the data rate up to 5259 (??) and only did a single pass (?). also they put it at 23.98 FPS which we were specifically asked not to do, but that would technically increase their per frame data rate. although that can’t be the answer.”

Each of these, EACH, can make a difference.
HD? h.264 at 5mb/s ? Yup, that’ll work. Single pass? Strange, but possible. 23.98? Well, if they shot it that way…it means every frame got 20% more information (than if they used the same exact settings at 29.97).
Production values? Well, a soft DOF means easier compression.

Best,

Jeff G

Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
Come See me speak at NAB!
Compressor Essentials from Lynda.com
(older but still good) Marquee, Media Composer (3.5) and Basic/Advanced Color DVDs (1.0) from Vasst.com
Contact me through my Website

[Eva Kay]

HI Craig,
Would you say that Internet killed the video star covers all types of compression techniques not just for the web?

also, when you call it for the “web” -do you only refer to small size files like youtube ,vimeo etc (although they allow HD hi res as well ) or would you say it also deals with specs for any Digital file to be launched online on any platform ,any size and codec?

thanks !

Eve

[Craig Seeman]

Web. Web can be all the way to 1080p these days. Basically web as opposed to Optical Disc (DVD/Blu-ray) or Broadcast delivery (Program and Transport streams). Web can include videos posted by broadcast channels though.

Since then a great book has come out, also on web. Highly recommended by me.
https://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/video-compression-for-flash-apple-devices-and-html5.html