FCP – Flickering Transitions

[Don Greening]

Hi Jon,

Does the QT movie you exported from FCP have the same transition issues, or is it only after encoding to mpeg2 that they happen?

Did you export the movie from FCP with DVD Studio Pro markers or Compression markers? You can’t use both but I’m just wondering if you used either of these two choices.

What were the encode settings you used? 1 pass CBR or 2 pass VBR?

What is your version of DVDSP? If using Compressor, what is the program version?

Did you use Compressor for your encode or did you just import the movie into DVDSP and let that do the encoding?

Did you export your movie from FCP using the “Export using Qucktime Conversion” command?

As you can see, there are many things that can contribute to DVD issues.

– Don

“Please take a moment to fill out your profile, including your computer system and relevant software. Help us help you.”

[Tim Danyo]

If you are working in DV, make sure your field dominance is set to lower.

Tim

[Jon Jay]

Hi Don,
Thanks for your response and format questions!

1.

[Don Greening]

[Jon Jay] “Does this help to isolate the problem?”

Yes it does.

Try these steps:

Export from FCP as self contained with compression markers. These markers are automatically generated within FCP for every transition and fade. These markers aren’t visible in the FCP timeline but they’re there. These markers tell Compressor or DVDSP to pay special attention to the transitions/fades and results in much better mpeg2 quality in those areas. Just a side note: If you export with compression markers the resulting QT .mov file will have a visible text track at the top of the frame. Don’t worry about it because it won’t be visible in the final mpeg2 product. You can always make it invisible anyway in QT Player by unchecking the text track box in the “show movie properties” window.

Drag your self contained .mov file into Compressor and encode using one pass CBR setting with a constant bit rate of 6.5. w/ motion estimation at best quality. The 2 pass VBR setting in Compressor 2 is buggy and a lot of people are having problems with it. Apple knows about the bug. I’m pretty sure that DVDSP 4 will use the same encoding engine that Compressor 2 does, and using Compressor 2 instead of DVDSP 4 will give you better control over the encoding process. You can always try an encode with both programs to check for any differences in quality.

If you’re not used to exporting the audio from FCP seperately for encoding as an .ac3 file then you should look into doing so for various reasons, not the least of which is having more DVD space for video content because of the smaller audio file size. The other big plus is that some consumer DVD players will sometimes choke on the large file sizes of .aif or PCM audio.

Try the above suggestions one at a time on a test piece of video to see what happens to your problem transistions.

– Don

“Please take a moment to fill out your profile, including your computer system and relevant software. Help us help you.”

[Jon Jay]

Thanks Don!
The second option, draging self contained .mov file into Compressor, remedied the problem.

However, I encoded using “DVD: Fastest encode 90 min -16:9, MPEG2, 6.2Mbps, 1 pass 16:9; wasn’t able to find “one pass CBR setting with a constant bit rate of 6.5. w/ motion estimation at best quality” dialogue box.

Jon