fcp compressor

[Scott Henderson]

David, I looking at a Sony monitor for the FCP, and the preview window for Compressor. Then I look at the output.

Scott

Thanks,

Scott Henderson

[Scott Henderson]

I do have a Kona Lhi card that I can look at the vid.

Scott

Thanks,

Scott Henderson

[David Roth weiss]

[scott henderson] “I do have a Kona Lhi card that I can look at the vid. “

Okay, now you’re really pissing me off… 🙂 🙂 🙂

Cuz, you’ve got me stumped, and I hate to get stumped.

It certainly sounds like you’re doing everything right.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Dan Monro]

Hey Scott, don’t sweat getting lost in all of the settings. I’m an Avid guy, too. As are a lot of us. As my friend says, “the good news is that Final Cut will let you work with any footage from anywhere. The bad news is that Final Cut will let you work with any footage from anywhere.”

He also often has to say that FCP is doing exactly what I’m telling it to do. Almost every time I have a problem, its because I have a setting wrong, or a preference, or a file type. The payoff for having an editor as flexible as final cut is that we have to pay a lot more attention to detail than we did in Avid. Its been a hell of a learning curve for me, compressed into about one tenth of the time it took me to learn Avid (so far). Hang in there; its worth it.

Dan Monro
FCP, Avid, AfterFX, Atlanta
MacBook Pro 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 2 GB ram
Mac OS X 10.5.7
GeForce 8600M GT Final Cut Pro 6.0.5 Quicktime 7.6

[David Heidelberger]

Scott,

What version of Final Cut are you using? I recently noticed really bad aliasing in Compressor 3.5 (which ships with FCP 7) when downconverting, which wasn’t present in the previous version.

There are a few threads on this over on the Apple forums. I’m surprised that nothing has shown up about it here yet. Anyway, here’s what I’m seeing. Progressive 720p23.98 source material downconverted to 23.98 MPEG-2, using the DVD best settings, additionally I had Frame Controls enabled and resize set to best. Changing the anti-aliasing doesn’t seem to do anything. Clean install, by the way.

Mike’s suggestion above to downconvert first and then export to DVD sounds like a good one to me. You could try using the “Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) NTSC 48kHz Anamorphic” sequence preset and then just be sure to change the sequence frame rate to 23.98. Then drop your exported clip into that, re-export, and bring that into Compressor.

– David

[Scott Henderson]

Participants, I thank you all. The mind total working this on one problem gives me great hope for the future. I believe I have reached a conclusion, somewhat.

Compressor hates 23.98. it will only work well with 29.97. If only i knew this before i shot this last project. To overcome this problem, I inserted the 23.98 into a 29.97 timeline, exported as a QT, and sent to the compressor. I tweaked all the adjustments to better, took the bit rates up .3 each, added gamma correction, and other that a few jitters on zooms, it looks just like the HD downconverted Avid edited standard def DVDs I used to make at the production house. (Is that a run on sentence?)

So thank you all, and I dread the next time I am in such an anxious moment that I require your help, but am thrilled to know that you are out there.

An editor in need, and thanks again,

Scott Henderson

Thanks,

Scott Henderson