MPEG2 4:2:2 playback

[Daniel Low]

What spec is your Mac?

You might want to try Movist:
https://code.google.com/p/movist/

__________________________________________________________________
Sent from my iPad Nano.

[Eric Graybeal]

2.66 Quad core Mac Pro. 6 GB RAM. ATI Radeon HD 2600 Graphics card. 2 TB internal RAID. OSX 10.5.8

No luck with Movist. I get some audio, but no video at all.

I’m still curious about VLC. Every movie I play runs for 8 seconds before freezing. Audio playback is fine. The first 8 seconds is only Black with a 5 second slate, but as soon as I hit the first 1/2 second of the spot it freezes.

My compression is following DG Fastchannel’s upload specs.
MPEG2 Program Stream.
4:2:2 Chroma
720×512 dimension
4×3 Aspect Ratio
.9 Pixel aspect ratio
Upper field dominate

[Craig Seeman]

What are you encoding with?

I use Episode for DG and VLC 1.0.5 plays back the files for me last I checked. MacPro Dual Quad (8core) early 2008.

[Eric Graybeal]

We are using Cleaner 6.5. I know its super old, but it is the only thing that is giving us the correct 4:2:2 chroma. I’ve already been certified through DG using Cleaner, but I don’t have any way of viewing the compressed files before I send off, which makes us nervous.

We own Compressor and Squeeze 4.5. It would require us to spend between $500 and $1000 to go to Squeeze 5 or Episode. We are not willing to spent that at all, we don’t need DG that bad. We’ll can just load our MPEG-2s directly to stations FTP sites. They are less sticklers about there color spacing, plus they tend to use normal dimensions. But DG seems to be the industry standard, so we can’t ignore it completely.

[Craig Seeman]

Files that match DG’s specs are certainly hard to playback in typical desktop software players.

You can try MPlayer or MPEGStreamClip as you’ve already tried VLC. That’s all I can think of offhand.

If DG and playback before sending is not mission critical (worth $500) then you may have to live with not seeing the encodes. If you’ve been certified and you follow the same procedures that got you there, you should be safe. If there’s something technically wrong with the encode, DG will likely contact you.

[Eric Graybeal]

Thanks for the help.

Neither Mplayer and MPEG streamclip work. I think I am just going to remind DG to check my files if we need to do a mass distribution.

Thanks again
Eric

[Joe Cygan]

Hey Craig- you seem to be the man for DG encoding with Episode. Could you possibly post the settings you use? I am new to Episode and we are working to get certified w DG. Thanks! Joe

[Doug Beal]

oddly enough we have to playback on a toshiba laptop with Vista and windows media player

Doug Beal
Editor / Engineer
Rock Creative Images
Nashville TN

[Tommy Daquino]

It’s good to know that I’m not the only one that can’t view these files once they’re set up. I’ve just been setting them up in Compressor. Of course, they’re fine, until I check the “YUV 4.2.2 Color” box, then on playback, I hear about a half second of audio, and no video whatsoever.

The odd thing is, They’ll accept the HD MPEGs in 4;2:0, but not the SD files. Oh well. Glad to have found it’s a common problem.

Thanks guys!

[Craig Seeman]

As noted above. Use VLC to check playback of those files.