FCP/Compressor wierdness – or, is it the operator!?!

[Tom Brooks]

I believe if you hover your mouse over the yellow triangle, it will tell you what the warning is. For me, it’s always that the file name already exists. Truth be told, I’m not sure what happens if you just ignore it and don’t change anything. My sense is that it overwrites the existing file. I always change the filename to get rid of the warning. Doing that could fix your troubles. Always test compression on a small segment to work out the kinks.

Others will give you more. Many suggest you not tie up FCP for the export. INstead, export a quicktime movie of the timeline and take that separately into Compressor. There are a lot of efficiency tricks you can learn with Compressor.

[David Roth weiss]

[Tom Brooks] “Many suggest you not tie up FCP for the export. INstead, export a quicktime movie of the timeline and take that separately into Compressor.”

I would certainly suggest that… The only benefit to using Compressor straight from the timeline is essentially scene by scene variable bitrate compression, which ain’t all its cracked up to be when creating most DVDs.

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

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ?

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Pat Defilippo]

Hi Tom!

Thanks for the info regarding my compression problem!

I usually get the yellow triangle when I have a file with the exact same name as well, and usually I’ll either go and delete the old file or re-name the new one. But, this yellow triangle must not be that an old one exists, though, becuase, after what appears to be compression for several hours, no file exists.

Usually, I do Export a Quicktime Movie and go into Compressor with that becuase it does not tie up FCP6 and it is much faster as well. However, I’ve also done it that way and all of the Chapter Markers are gone. If I Export a Quicktime Movie on this 2 hour and 27 minute video, too, I might as well first re-render the whole thing becuase it will take just as long to run either process.

So, I was just trying to save many hours but, unless anyone else has any other upcoming ideas, I’m rendering the entire timeline in the meantime and will try to Export via Compressor once again when that process finishes so that I don’t lose all of my dozens of Chapter Markers through Export a Quicktime Movie.

I will definitely hover the mouse over the yellow triangle though, Tom, and see if that offers any hints at what the problem is. Thanks for your reply and idea!
-Pat

[David Roth weiss]

Pat,

When exporting using Export Quicktime Movie you have to make certain to check the “Markers” box and select “all markers.” That should export a file with all of your markers.

David

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

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ?

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Tom Brooks]

David,
Is it your experience that VBR in general is not beneficial for most short-form DVDs or is there a danger of some other potentially bad side-effect from the direct Final Cut export using Compressor?
Tom

[David Roth weiss]

[Tom Brooks] “Is it your experience that VBR in general is not beneficial for most short-form DVDs or is there a danger of some other potentially bad side-effect from the direct Final Cut export using Compressor?”

In theory VBR compression should yield a more consistent looking encode, especially when there is a combination of fast action scenes intercut with scenes that have little movement. And, 2-pass VBR should yield better compression than one pass because 2-pass analyzes video before encoding. My experience is that the differences when making DVDs are typically only evident when encoding really excellent video or when trying to squeeze several hours of video onto a single DVD. When encoding normal or really bad video the results are usually not very apparent.

I’ve found that when encoding directly from the timeline Compressor sometimes does not handle dissolves and fades very well. Though I have not tested that in practice since Compressor 3 came out.

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

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ?

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Pat Defilippo]

Hi again, all,

Well, I did as I said I would do yesterday and I’m getting back with you on it. After a 5th attempt, it did finally work – sort of.

Here’s what I have done in the last 24 hours since starting this string:

1) I broke down and rendered the entire timeline in FCP6, which took about 6 hours for the 2 hour and 24 minute video with dozens of Chapter Markers. This shouldn’t have mattered much, but considering the fifth time through Compressor was the charm, perhaps this made the difference?

2) I took the lengthy timeline through Export Using Compressor, applied DVD Best Quality, changed the Quality of the m2v file to 4.1 (per the Bit Budget Excel file) and clicked “Submit” at 3:45pm. Everything started up fine and the temporary files that Compressor created were visible in the finder.

3) At the time I clicked on Submit in Compressor, there was no yellow caution triangle. There wasn’t for quite a while, but somewhere around the start of the process there was. Is this normal when Compressor is writing to a file that it already should know is its own temporary file? I double-clicked the yellow caution triangle to see that it said “The Target Will Overwrite An Existing File With The Same Name”. Again, Compressor had just started up that exact same, brand new file and was writing to it at the time. There were no existing files with the same name before this.

4) After five tries this week, the file finished at 1am this morning. So, it took about 9.25 hours to compress less than a 2.5 hour rendered timeline for DVD only on a 2.5ghz Quad core. Unlike the first four tries, the temporary file Compressor was writing to stayed viewable in the finder (instead of disappearing upon completion while Compressor reported “Successful Completion”). Does this length of compression time seem right or does anyone know why the file would have just disappeared upon Compressor completion on four previous 9-plus hour attempts this week? The ac3 file would not disappear, but the m2v did.

5) This might be more of a question for the DVD Studio Pro forum, but the completed m2v file size at a quality of 4.1 was 4.19gb and the ac3 audio file was 201mb. This should add up to about 4.4gb, right? In DVDSP though, with no menus or other assets (I’m making this asset a First Play), the meter reads 4.9gb! So, at this time, I’m re-compressing the whole 9.25 hour process for a 6th time this week at a quality of 3.9 this time. The Bit Budget Excel file, although very useful, definitely was on the high side. I entered 147 minutes for Total Dolby 2.0 Stereo (ac3) and for the Video Assets and, at a maximum bit rate of 7.8 (of which I even left Compressor at its default of 7.5), it said to encode at an Average Bit Rate of 4.1. I don’t want to make it sound like I’m complaining about this free Worksheet, though, and I’m not pressed for time this week while FCP6 is tied up with Compressor. I do appreciate the author of it taking the time to make it and then make it available to us all!

Luckily and unluckily all at the same time, I had a no-work week this week and have/had time to address this!

If anyone has any comments or suggestions of what I did wrong, and even right, please do let me/us all know! I numbered the above steps I’ve taken in the last 24 hours to make it easier for you to reply to any specific step(s) that I did. I’ve been using FCS for over two years and have done many similar processes with it, and this “weirdness” is stuff I’ve never seen it do before.

Thanks again in advance!
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio 2 ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~
Sony DSR-40 DVCam ~
2.33ghz MacBook Pro 17″ (with FCS2) ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs and Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[David Roth weiss]

Pat,

Clearly you have taken a long ride over the learning curve. How many of your woes can be attributed to pilot error vs. application quirkiness is not important, because you ultimately conquered the demons.

However, the big lesson to take away from this is what is unfortunately causing you to have to repeat the encoding process yet again. That is, you didn’t take into account
that DVDs require overhead in addition to the audio and video assets you placed onboard. Whether you use menus or not, video DVDs require the same set of navigation instructions in the DVD header, and that takes up some room.

Also, while I understand that you were trying to squeeze every bit of quality you could into your 2:27 DVD, trying to get the bitrate exactly on the mark can, as you found out, bite you on the butt. There fact is, there’s not much difference in the final product when dropping the bitrate a few additional tenths of a point. I just hope for your sake that 3.9mbps makes the cut, because 3.5mbps would have given you plenty of margin without significantly affectly quality.

David

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

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY

[Pat Defilippo]

Hi David,

Thanks for the reply! I appreciate the thoughts.

In using the Bit Budget Excel file to determine the Average Bit Rate to use, however, it starts with a capacity of 4.7gb or 37,600 mbits and then it takes 4% out for what it calls Overhead. So, Audio Assets, Subtitle Streams, Motion Menus and DVD-ROM Content are subtracted from a starting poing of 36,096 (or 4% less than full 4.7gb capacity). It sounds like what you described for everything to work is what the Bit Budget is referring to as Overhead. So, when it said to do 4.1 including 147 minutes of ac3 audio and 147 minutes of m2v video including the overhead, I figured I would end up with a total file size within 4.7gb minus the Overhead – not 4.9gb.

I guess what I should do is change the overhead from 4%? Perhaps I can wait until the 3.9gb file is done and, if it is just within 4.7gb, change the overhead percentage (currently 4%) to the number that makes the Average Bit Rate change from 4.1 to match the 3.9. Then, I’ll know what the correct amount of Overhead that DVDSP requires.

The reason I am asking this is not as much from a newbie standpoint because I have compressed at least six projects for DVD that have exceeded 90 minutes in length in the last two years. However, this is my first one over 90 minutes using the new Compressor and there are some weird things going on compared to the recect Compressor.

Thanks for making me think about the Bit Budget harder to figure out that, if this all fits at a quality of 3.9, the overhead % will need to be upped from 4! I should be able to nail the correct Overhead percentage that DVDSP needs if my 3.9 quality setting equals 4.7 or slightly less on the DVDSP meter!

If it exceeds 4.7gb, I do have a 3.7 quality version of the same exact timeline that I did via FCS1 that adds up to 4.4gb in DVDSP. So, like you said, I’ll just use it because I’m not adding a lot of quality anyway and it’s probably not worth another 9-plus hours to compress for a seventh time at that point. I’m just always been one of those kind of guys who tries to get the most quality, even after going to such extreme measures of doing this all week long and still not getting there…

(…yet)!

Thanks agian,
-Pat

G5 Quad 2.5 Desktop with 4GB Ram, 500GB HD & Fiber Card ~
30″ Cinema Display & 17″ Sony SVGA ~
Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
AJA Io LA ~
Final Cut Studio 2 ~
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP ~
Sony DSR-40 DVCam ~
2.33ghz MacBook Pro 17″ (with FCS2) ~~~

P D Post Productions, Inc. ~
TV~DVD~VHS~CD~WEB
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs and Family Occasions since 1983 ~
E-mail PD@PDPost.com ~
Website http://www.PDPost.com ~
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

[Jeff Coleman]

[David Roth Weiss] “check the “Markers” box and select “all markers.” That should export a file with all of your markers.
“
Doesn’t work. Hands Compressor a file with no markers

QT 7.2
FCP 6.0.1
Compressor 3.0.1
OS X 10.4.10
2xQuad Core MacIntel
9GB RAM