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Final Cut to DVDSP to PAL SD 16:9 Widescreen
G’day Cowsters,
Long time listener, first time caller, love the show. Seriously, massive wealth of knowledge. If you guys can help me with this I’ll be forever in your debt.
I want to output to a PAL SD DVD (in 16:9) with the best possible quality. I’m working with footage shot on a Sony HVR-V1P (in 16:9 – 1440 by 1080) and titles from Motion.
My footage and effects look great but my titles which I’ve done in Motion suck. They become blocky and pixellated and sometimes get a horizontal line effect as if you’re seeing each row of pixels. So my spider senses are telling me I’m going wrong somewhere in the pixel aspect, frame size, settings area.
I know the titles can look better because I just imported a motion file (of a white title on black back) directly into DVDSP and put it next to the same file that is coming with the footage through Final cut and it’s clear and crisp and the Final Cut one looks like an 80s arcade game.
Here’s the settings and workflow I’m using (in reverse order);
DVDSP: DVD Standard:SD DVD – Video Standard: PAL – Resolution 720-576i – Display Mode 16:9 Letterbox
Exported from Final Cut by Export->QuicktimeMovie
FINAL CUT: Frame Size: 1440×1080 – Aspect Ratio: HD(1440×1080)(16:9) – Pixel Aspect Ratio: HD(1440×1080) – [Anamorphic 16:9: NO] – Field Dominance: Upper (Odd) [Quicktime Video Settings] – Compressor: DV-PAL, Quality: %100
(could it be the compressor maybe – my DVDSP(4) won’t import anything encoded with H264 or any of the HDV compressors I’ve tried.)
The Titles are a motion file – drag and dropped into Final Cut.
MOTION: Project Properties – Width:1440 – Height:1080 – Bit Depth – 8 Bit- [Dither: NO] – Pixel Aspect Ratio: HD(960×720, 1440×1080) 1.33 – Field Order:None – Background: Transparent
That’s a lot to chew on I’m hoping I’m not missing something painfully obvious. Although that would make sense. Cheers.
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2 Replies
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Your settings are weird. If you export with current settings from your HDV timeline and then bring that into Compressor, you should be exporting an mpeg2 for DVDSP. Use the 90 minute best quality preset until you get the hang of tweaking some of the values.
I don’t understand the DV PAL compressor setting you refer to. Basically you want Compressor (the program) to do the down convert to 720 x 576. DV is an intermediate transcoding step that is entirely unnecessary and unhelpful as it chews titles and graphics. So export from FCP with the same settings as the sequence.
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Hey thanks mate, great avatar.
Just to get this right, you’re saying export an mpeg2 using comressor. I’ll give that a go right now. Cheers
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