How to Compress TV/VIDEO NOISE without Artifacts??

[Russell Lasson]

So you shot a TV with a camera and now your compressing it? What codec are you editing in?

-Russ

[Jbertain]

I’m editing in Final Cut 5 and I have tried several different combinations of compressing. But I’ve been using Compressor, compressing it as Mpeg2.

[Russell Lasson]

What camera did you shoot it on? Is it HD?

-Russ

[Jbertain]

Oh sorry,…The clips are mini dv. It is DV/DVCPRO – NTSC, and it’s 720 x 480.

[Jbertain]

I shot it on a SD camera. The whole project is SD, not HD.

[Russell Lasson]

It’s an uphill battle when you shoot on DV to make a great looking MPEG2 file, but you might try applying a 4:1:1 Color Smoothing filter (in the Key folder of Video Filters) before you compress the section. That should help cut down the artifacts.

Also, compression is more of an art than a setting. In your case, it will turn into an experiment. Try making several custom settings in compressor and seeing how each setting effects this section of your film. Play around with the advanced settings too (even if you don’t know exactly what they do).

Also, if you export a self contained movie file and open it in QuickTime, it won’t look good until you enable high-quality video for the clip in the QuickTime settings. (Apple+J – select video track – select visual settings – select high-quality video in lower right of the box.)

-Russ

[Jbertain]

Great, thanks. I’m trying it now. So then with DV what is the best way to compress it, being I have FCP and Compressor?

Do I export: quicktime movie self contained or not self contained? Then should I take that file and drag into compressor or just straight into DVDSP, and is Mpeg2 the best format for a DV project? Or is there some way to “up-press” the quality?

I know it’s a lot of quations, I do apologize. I am versed more in art than tech specifics, but I’m coming to realize they must *equally* compliment each other. Again thanks for your help thus far.

j

[Ben Holmes]

Have you tried encoding using the 2-Pass Variable bit rate? This should analyse the video and check for these kind of ‘tricky’ encoding moments.

However, I suspect you’ll still struggle. MPEG2 does indeed hate noise, as do many other long-gop formats, and even MJPEG. If this is so important to your project, and DVD is the final output format, you may have consider a way around this. A different transition could help (via black?) or you could try lowering the video levels. Sometimes this helps compression if the differences between light and dark areas in lowered.

Professional DVD transfers require many passes and often frame by frame analysis to avoid problems like this – compressor is a bit of a blunt instrument in comparison. You could always try another product, like Media Cleaner – but I cannot speak from any experience if this will help.

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live broadcast.

OB Server 1 HD – Mobile FCP editing done right.
https://www.editecuk.com/OBServer2.html

[Russell Lasson]

Exporting the file to compressor instead of using DVDSP is better. It gives you more options.

Exporting a self-contained file at current settings then taking that file to compressor is the same as sending it directly from FCP to compressor.

If you have applied filters to the section of your film, then you might want to change the sequence settings to DV50 or Uncompressed. If the clips don’t need to be rendered, then that won’t help in getting the quality to be a little better.

-Russ

[Russell Lasson]

Also if you want to get really tricky, you might try to blur the blue channel a little as noise is often strongest in the blue channel.

-Russ