HDV to SD – DVD

[Eric Pautsch]

Correct Down Conversion is everything here!!

Adjusting your GOP will do you no good and adds extra unneeded I frames. Only times Ive ever adjusted GOP structures was back in the day when we either had to set a DL break point on a certain area or had a multi-angle project. Alexander is very much on the mark with VBR encodes in Compressor. Compressor is notorious for bitrates spikes. But this all depends on the length of your program. If you can go with a straight CBR of about 6mb/s then that is the advice weve given around here for years.

As with any encode, I always advice check your bitrates with a analyzer…many are free.

BTW….Compressor is know as the worst encoder on planet in the world of professional DVD production….so just a small heads up there 🙂

Also down converting is an important process here. These are the methods Ive used for years…but its PC only

https://www.precomposed.com/blog/2009/07/hd-to-sd-dvd-best-methods/

https://bellunevideo.com/tutorials/hd2sdTutorial/hd2sd.html

Here’s another good tutorial for the Mac – following it will pretty much provide you a good workflow from HDV

https://www.lafcpug.org/Tutorials/basic_hdvideo_to_dvd.html

[Alexander Kallas]

[Grant Strac] “I have three mac’s I edit with but my main machine is MacPro 8 core Intel 22gb ram 4 2tb drives. It is set up with four boots. One with lion for my personal use & fcs x, one boot with leopard fsc 1, one with snow leopard for fcs 2, and lion for fcs3. This is for all my clients. But I have old iMac and year old MBP which both handle my work as well.

Also I would disagree with your statement about VBR and GOP. I have never heard or had top cause issues with dvd players. GOP is something specifically designed for dvd only. Ever since I was taught by Apple Master Trainer to do what I said to do four years ago I have never had issue. Gop is important because the smaller it is the more information put on each frame. If you have 10 i frames in the encode or 100 that means it will have all the information on 100 frames rather than half the information over a large top structure. It doesn’t add much size it just means that many more frames have full information it needs.

Gop is IpppbI then only two frames have full information in that frame then the encoder “fudges” the information between the I’s and there is half or less information in that gap. Bad analogy but best way to explain without the full details. If you have IpbI successively then more quality

Your comment about cbr or vbr is almost correct. I didn’t even mention it as advice because it’s minuscule difference between the two. In either selection you still get high bit rate one just decides that in less image intensive sections to put less information so it has more room for the image intensive scenes. It automatically chooses how much information to put into the frames that need more than others, like a fade in & out will be less so the next scene can have more. This way you save space on disc. But he needed advice to preserve quality and these details will add more quality but insignificant to his needs. I do appreciate your insight.
“

thanks Grant, this stuff really belongs on the DVDSP forum, however, lets go on.
22GB of RAM is above most editors, what are the minimum specs that you have tried this on, your other machines? I would suspect that RAM is the limiting factor.
If we are talking replication (molded discs) the bit-rate can be close to the maximum limit, it’s a matter of reflectivity. If you’re producing in this realm VBR in Compressor is going to spike, CBR not.
now if you talking CinemaCraft…
Fiddling with GOP among other things, is also going to present space problems, and your bit-rate calculator is not your friend anymore, making coasters and eventually going to DVD9s (dual layer)

Cheers
Alexander

[Douglas Garvey]

Compressor is anticipating that one of my files (8Gigs) will be at least 30Gigs once converted to ProRes. Should I just use one of Compressors presets for converting to DV NTSC?

[Grant Strac]

Well we both are here to help Alex. We obviously have our difference of opinions. I could say I disagree and offer reasons why and you could do the same as we have been but this doesn’t help the forum users. For our personal delivery needs obviously it works for you and I. I appreciate your insight but I’m not here to talk outside of what the needs of the original poster are. I thank you for your opinions it made me analyze my stream of thought.

Grant Strac
Apple Master Pro Certified Final Cut Studio 2
Apple Trainer Certified FInal Cut Pro 6
Apple Final Cut Optimization Certified

[Grant Strac]

Alexander, I deeply apologize for my long delay. I had a motion graphic commercial I was contracted for and it had very short delivery turn around. I was locked in a room for couple days.

My other machines are much less powerful. My macbook pro has 4gb of Ram, dual core 2.66 mhz, 256mb video card. My iMac is much older it’s the last enervation of the white casing right before it went aluminum. Still a kickass machine 3gb ram, 128mb video card (I think), Dual core intel. So it works on less powerful machines just takes longer.

The limiter in encoding time is Ram, defiantly when I got my MacPro and had 8 gb of ram when I encoded my DSLR footage in a 1 minute commercial it took quite some time. Now with 22gb it is ridiculous how fast it is. I always suggest if have iMac or MacPro to go max on Ram because in all the suites programs it is very helpful to operation and cheap depending on generation.

I could not comment on the cinema craft because I only use the Apple Suite programs to complete my tasks just because that’s what I was taught in my master pro course. I’ve never had a problem with GOP in replication. I worked at TV studio for five years two of them I never changed GOP the final three I did and never had a spit back. The only time DVDSP has given me replication problems is if I changed any of the Region settings which was weird. I was told that’s because the replication machines are set to make all and automatically spit back anything other than all regions.

I hope that I was able to help with your original problem.

Grant Strac
Apple Master Pro Certified Final Cut Studio 2
Apple Trainer Certified Final Cut Pro 6
Apple Final Cut Studio Optimization Certification