Help! Verify my workflow ProRes, Compressor, etc.

[Chris Gorman]

Thanks for your help and patience. I set up custom settings and have a few questions.

I set the ac3 audio to 320 kbps, no surround. The default preprocessing is film std, low pass filter, dc filter. Should I just leave this as is?

My source audio is cd music direct feed from a board – one channel. 2nd channel is audience/ambient sound. These were set to stereo mix in fcp.

Re: the video . . .though i’m not sure if it’s necessary, but because it’s dance footage, i thought i’d try Open GOP for better quality? (the size stays at 15). My understanding is that with Open GOP I need a high quality bit rate, so set it at 6.0-8.0., Best.

I hope this doesn’t increase compression time to more than the 20 hours it took with the default Apple settings for DVD 90 mins. Ya think it will?

The other settings: In the video format window, ntsc, auto frame rate, aspect ration 16.9, top field first.

I’m stilling having a hard time wrapping my mind around the “Frame Control” setting. I do not want to change the 16.9 of the source video. Should I just choose “Off” Is there any reason I’d need to choose “On”?

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Chris,

[chris gorman] “The other settings: In the video format window, ntsc, auto frame rate, aspect ration 16.9, top field first.
“
Set NTSC and the other parameters just let them grayed.

[chris gorman] “‘m stilling having a hard time wrapping my mind around the “Frame Control” setting. I do not want to change the 16.9 of the source video. Should I just choose “Off” Is there any reason I’d need to choose “On”?
“
Don’t worry about the aspect ratio. Even if you set 4×3, later in DVDSTP you can set it as 16×9.
If you choose “Frame control>ON” this will help you to doing your downscalling from HD to SD and your pixels from Square to DV NTSC.
But this will increase the compression time.
If you decide set it ON, don’t change any other parameter. Just ON.

[chris gorman] “Re: the video . . .though i’m not sure if it’s necessary, but because it’s dance footage, i thought i’d try Open GOP for better quality? (the size stays at 15). My understanding is that with Open GOP I need a high quality bit rate, so set it at 6.0-8.0., Best. “
Yes. I think that can be OK. Set OPEN, but keeping Long GOPs. I don’t think this will increase your compression time.
In fact Compressor takes longer in all the processes previous to the compression (Downscalling, de-interlacing, time-base changes,..) than in the very MPG-2 compression.
Open GOPs will help you. Like that each GOP, although have only one “I” frame, it uses the “I” frames of the GOPs beside as reference too. So is like every GOP will have in fact more than one “I” frame.
About the audio, I think that the default parameters are OK. Only if you would be making your film to be played in a movie theater or so you would need to adjust few things. However (as the 99% of the video editors) sound is not my especiality at all. have a look here in the Cow. A couple of weeks ago was a thread about audio in Compressor. Also in the” Compression Techniques” probably you can dig more.
Cheers,
rafael

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