PAL Conversion in FCP 5 using compressor

[Graeme Nattress]

People were reporting this over at the Apple forums. I don’t have my FCP5 yet, but I’m going to take a look and see what I can come up with as soon as it arrives, not least to compare what C2 is doing compared to my own little plugin.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Pdr]

Hi Jeff

Just a thought

[Ntz]

Hi,
I once tried a PAL DVD in a NTSC DVD Player, and, quite to my surprise, it worked fine.
There was no way the DVD was not PAL, since it was a European DVD brought here
over the Ocean…
Do you know how thats possible?

[Mitchji]

Hi,

The following was posted in the DVDSP Forums the other day by Adolfo. He posted a couple of followups to his first post which was in reponse to someone who got poor results using Compressor for Standards Conversion:
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Apple said it was going to provide hardware quality conversions. And the quick tests I could perform suggest that’s completely true! I don’t have Production Suite yet, but someone kindly allowed me yesterday to do a few tests. To say it’s impressive would be an understatement. The key parameters are the ones in the Frame controls tab (the default for frame rate resampling is poor). If you choose the high (not the highest) option for each setting (resizing, deinterlacing if needed, frame rate conversion, etc), the results are outstanding. If you choose the really highest ones, encoding times could be huge and I didn’t have the time to test that.

———————————————————————————–
Jeff: Sorry I can’t read your other thread now (about to begin a class here) but it seems like the “factory” standards conversion preset don’t work well.
Just set it manually:

1) Select the source entry (not the setting) in the Batch window, double click it and make sure in the inspector that the original field dominance is interpreted correctly. If not, change it. For example, I have a lot of PAL progressive animations which, being PAL, Compressor didn’t recognize as progressive.

2) Select a preset with the video format and standard you need, like DV NTSC or DV PAL, DV50 NTSC or PAL, etc. This is, your “target” standard and format. The Motion graphics preset group have most of these, for instance.

3) Go to Frame controls and set it to “custom”.
Then:
“Resize filter”: better or best.
“Output fields” should be lower for DV25/DV50, upper for uncompressed. Or progressive for either, if you want that. I couldn’t try any HD <> SD down or upconversion, obviously, it was a reseller computer without any HD capabilities.

“Deinterlace” (if wanted) better or best (One thing I could not check in my tests, is if Compressor correctly bypasses deinterlacing if the source is interpreted as progressive. I have a small concern here, but I am not sure).
“Rate Conversion” (the KEY PARAMETER!): Better or Best, if you can afford a long wait.

———————————————————————————–
Mitch: I can’t give you good time estimates, because I tried several settings without taking notes or anything. When at the very best, it takes more or less like Graeme’s great plug-in. But I could be way off. I tried really small sections on that computer. I believe I remember a one minute uncompressed PAL animation took an hour to convert to NTSC with everything at “best” (Dual 2.0 G5). The “better” options are not that slow, apparently.
———————————————————————————–

Please don’t trust my memory too much. I was testing quality, not speed. And it wasn’t really testing, it was just some time with a system 🙂

But FWIW, the “better” settings seemed really faster. And according to what I saw, Compressor 2 with “better” settings could be “better” than anything I’ve seen so far in software. I would probably only choose “best” for the frame rate conversion itself, but I need to experiment more.

Best Wishes,

Mitch

[Graeme Nattress]

I did an NTSC to PAL test with the highest settings. An 8 second clip that takes about minute in my plugin took about 35 minutes in compressor. The results from both looked excellent, with the compressor versions smoothness being a little superior, but not 34 minutes superior. Examining field by field, even though Compressor is set to fully motion compensating, I’m still seeing double / tripple images, which I thought I’d not be seeing with such a technology. I think more investigation is needed, but the render times are, as predicted, utterly horrendous and impractical without an army of G5s at your disposal. I’ll be checking out the lower quality options next.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Mitchji]

Hi Graeme,

Have you compared with the Algolith (($30 for a one week license). If their Format conversion is as good as their noise reduction it should be pretty good. Their noise reduction is about 30:1 on a Dual G5. They told me their standards conversion is about the same.

Format Conversion Weekly License for After Effects
https://shop.algolith.com/product.php?productid=16182&cat=253&page=1

Format Converter for Command Line Tools
https://shop.algolith.com/product.php?productid=16194&cat=259&page=1

Best Wishes,

Mitch

[Graeme Nattress]

No I’ve not – do they not supply before and after footage??

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

I have a USA player that plays NTSC, PAL and will even convert from one format to another, but it’s a not common to have these features.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Mitchji]

[Graeme Nattress] “No I’ve not – do they not supply before and after footage??”

I don’t think so.

Thanks!

Mitch

[Jeff Gural]

Thanks for all the input on the PAL conversion. I did finally get compressor to work pretty well. It was a matter of the fields. For some reason if I bring in two clips which I captured from the same IO project, one is labelled upper and the other is lower. That’s a little strange. But it does look pretty good when all that gets sorted out.

thanks,

jeff