Exporting a 8 minute HD movie FCP

[Brian Alexander]

[Keith Rivers] “(shot on the RED, the files were ranging from 2k-3k)”

Are you referring to the frame size or bit rate?

[Keith Rivers] “H264 compression in FCP”

Did you do this with compressor or QuickTime Compression? If you did use Compressor, how did you get your project exported and ready for encoding?

[Keith Rivers] “but it gave me massive film grain issues”

When done right, you should not be able to tell the difference between your original file and the h.264 encode. Sounds like you may have to do a gamma correction (1.2) in compressor but that’s just a guess since we don’t know the rest of your workflow.

[Keith Rivers] “Can anyone recommend any other type of encode and compression technique?”

Honestly don’t know why you would want to use anything other than h.264; it is the most advanced codec for offering quality vs file size and it’s 2-3 times more efficient than the other MPEG codecs.

Of course any codec talk should be based on your intended output. What is the purpose or intended output for this encoded video?

[Keith Rivers]

Are you referring to the frame size or bit rate?

bit rate

Did you do this with compressor or QuickTime Compression? QT Compression. Should I instead export an Uncompressed 10 bit and then encode in compresser an h264 with a gamma setting?

What is the purpose or intended output for this encoded video?

8 minute short film for the big screen, national film festival.

thank you for your help so far…

keith
youtube.com/krfilms

[Daniel Low]

I’m really confused

2k / 4k when referring to cameras like RED usually relate to frame size NOT bit rate. With video there are obviously no such datarates as 2K or 4K per second (unless you deal with very miniature frames sizes)!?

When you are working with RED you are working at the very high end of video, you really need to know your stuff, you can’t fudge around like this.

I’d be exporting a quicktime reference file to compressor, you want to avoid transcoding to another codec (like Uncompressed) before H.264

You must be using compressor (or similar) to do you encodes but you HAVE to find out how your material will be played back at the film festival. You can’t just turn up with an H.264 file!

Your grain issues have nothing to do with Gamma, the two are totally unrelated. There are Gamma problems with Quicktime H.264 but they don’t manifest themselves as huge increases in grain!

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[Keith Rivers]

i’m sorry i confused you.

the 2k and 4k file sizes i processed when using RedRushes

What do you mean by QT reference file to compressor? Export using Compressor directly… or something else?

I presume the file at the film festival will be played on a DVD.

Since this post, I compressed an h264, an uncompressed 10 but 4:2:2, a redcode, HDV, DVCPRO NTSO 48khz, MPEG 50/mbps encodes, but nothing seems to look like the same as the fcp picture quality.

Help!

keith
youtube.com/krfilms

[Daniel Low]

Ok, lets try this another way; What frame sizes are you working with from RED?

To export by Reference:

FIle..>Export…>Quicktime Movie. Select ‘Using Sequence settings’ and deselect ‘Make Movie self contained’

If it’s DVD you need to output to them in 99% of cases you can only use MPEG-2, compressor has plenty of presets.

“Since this post, I compressed an h264, an uncompressed 10 but 4:2:2, a redcode, HDV, DVCPRO NTSO 48khz, MPEG 50/mbps encodes, but nothing seems to look like the same as the fcp picture quality.

Like I said, RED is the very high end, HDV, DVCPro, NTSC and MPEG are not. There is no way you can retain the picture quality using those formats, that just the way the cookie crumbles.

However, done correctly H.264 can retain most of the picture quality, but you need to be pretty expert with your tools to achieve this and it would appear to me that you are still struggling with the basics. I don’t mean any disrespect by saying that, you are working with highly complex and complicated applications and tools.

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[Keith Rivers]

What frame sizes are you working with from RED?

1920×1080 =2k
3840×2160 =4k

I’m very unfamiliar with encoding RED footage. Can you provide me some particular learning references that relate to my struggle?

keith
youtube.com/krfilms

[Daniel Low]

re 2k & 4k, right, glad we got that sorted!

You might want to start by reading through the posts here:
https://forums.creativecow.net/forum/redcamera

Here:
https://reduser.net/forum/index.php

And downloading the RED Final Cut Studio 2 Whitepaper from here:
https://www.red.com/support.

Lastly, this makes good reading:
https://provideocoalition.com/index.php/aadams/story/red_workflow_redux/

__________________________________________________________________
Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying ‘thanks’ is free!