HD editing/choppy playback/CS3 workflow

[Jeff Kosmicki]

I do use the Adobe Media Encoder, although I’ve used the Microsoft Windows Media Encoder as well, both work nicely.

For the settings, I do a single pass – variable Quality, with quality set at 90%. This will give me an average bitrate of 7 to 10Mb/s depending on the visual complexity of the source. For audio, I use the same single pass with variable quality, with the quality usually set to 75%. I don’t change any of the advanced settings, defualt works fine for me. I’m still using CS2, so I don’t know if there is any significant difference in CS3.

Axio hardware and codecs do help to speed up the export process, but does not effect image quality when excporting.

I haven’t found any difference with footage and rendered graphics as far as playback quality, most of my work is heavily AE comped and looks good as WMV HD.

I have found that old computers, laptop or desktop, with old GPUs can not play HD files of any format. But just about any semi-recent, gaming-level GPU card or better is desinged to play HD size video and do just fine. I test my WMV files on a desktop with a $50 Nvidia card before I send them out to clients.

Jeff Kosmicki
http://www.toyraygun.net

[Jeff Kosmicki]

I do use the Adobe Media Encoder, although I’ve used the Microsoft Windows Media Encoder as well, both work nicely.

For the settings, I do a single pass – variable Quality, with quality set at 90%. This will give me an average bitrate of 7 to 10Mb/s depending on the visual complexity of the source. For audio, I use the same single pass with variable quality, with the quality usually set to 75%. I don’t change any of the advanced settings, default works fine for me. I’m still using CS2, so I don’t know if there is any significant difference in CS3.

Axio hardware and codecs do help to speed up the export process, but does not effect image quality when exporting.

I haven’t found any difference with footage and rendered graphics as far as playback quality, most of my work is heavily AE comped and looks good as WMV HD.

I have found that old computers, laptop or desktop, with old GPUs can not play HD files of any format. But just about any semi-recent, gaming-level GPU card or better is designed to play HD size video and do just fine. I test my WMV files on a desktop with a $50 Nvidia card before I send them out to clients.

Jeff Kosmicki
http://www.toyraygun.net

[Jeff Kosmicki]

BTW, I downloaded some WMV HD movie trailers from https://www.thelookandsoundofperfect.com/ and played them through a Helios X5000 HD player to my plasma screen. The 720P clips are only 6.5Mb/s and look fantastic. A good resource for test clips.

Jeff Kosmicki
http://www.toyraygun.net

[Waverideco]

Thanks mate I’ll give that a try. Which encoding profile do you use, eg windows 8? or 9 advanced? can’t remember the options. Also, what audio codec did you use? Finally what frame rate are you using?

I’ll export some uncompressed Avi’s from Affx put em in prem and export with those settings and see how it goes.

Cheers,

[Jeff Kosmicki]

I use the Windows Media Video 9 codec, for audio it’s the Windows Media Audio 10 Professional, both I believe are the default in the Media Encoder. For frame rate I use “same as source”, which is usually 60fps for 720p.

[Waverideco]

I tried the settings you suggested and it worked great. I also changed the frame rate to 23.976 which I believe also was a important factor. I tried a couple clips at 30fps and the same dropped frame problem happened. I don’t think it would even play if I exported something at 60fps.It’s interesting that you can export 720p@60fps and it plays well. Would you happen to have a sample? The trailers look and play great from that site.

The colors seem to shift a bit which is still something I’m trying to figure out, but all in all it’s something I can use. Thanks for your help.

[Jeff Kosmicki]

When I get some time I will try to post a short clip that is 720 @ 60fps.