Prores HQ – good enough to produce an SD DVD?

[Zane Barker]

ProRes HQ will be just fine, in fact you don’t even have to go ProRes HQ, regular Pro res would be just fine.

There are no “technical solutions” to your “artistic problems”.
Don’t let technology get in the way of your creativity!

[John Fishback]

In fact there are many who recommend never using HQ for 720 or 1080 resolutions – it’s overkill and can cause problems. You can search the Cow for specifics.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 QT7.5.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 2 (FCP 6.0.5, Comp 3.0.5, DVDSP 4.2.1, Color 1.0.3)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[Michael Pye]

Thank you both very much your responses.

First, a minor mistake in my original post: the working format will be Prores HQ 1080i25.

Two follow on questions, if I may please:

1) (To John) if – as you very helpfully point out – it would appear other users have had issues with HQ, in your view would it be best to convert the HQ files to standard 422 (1980×1080 25p) to minimise potential problems?

2) (To Zane) with or without HQ, would a sensible workflow for SD DVD be to directly export the Prores using compressor’s mpeg2 template, or should I perform an intermediate stage, that is, first export the Prores HQ to an uncompressed SD format?

Many thanks again,
Michael

Macbook Pro 15″, 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB 1067 MHz DDR3, Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT; OS X 10.5.8, Final Cut Pro 6.0.6

[John Fishback]

1) If you’ve not had problems, I’d leave it as HQ. As for 2), my workflow is to export a self-contained QT (current settings) and use that file (it’s HD) in Compressor to make the SD mv2 and ac3 audio files. I usually use the 90 minute best quality preset. Sometimes I turn on Frame Controls (in Compressor’s Inspector) and set the quality settings to Best. This increases the encode time, but often improves the visual quality. Try testing a short portion of the program where the encoder will be stressed (fast motion, long dissolves, etc.) both ways to see if it’s worth the extra time.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 QT7.5.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 2 (FCP 6.0.5, Comp 3.0.5, DVDSP 4.2.1, Color 1.0.3)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[Michael Pye]

John, thank you very much again for your suggestions. The final products are to be a 10 minute promo and a 30 second advert, so I have lee-way to play around when it comes to encode times – mercifully so as I am only using a dual core machine at present! My final question in that case would be: since I am working with relatively small end-product, is there a setting (other than frame controls, as you rightly have pointed out), that would allow me to produce a higher-quality DVD than the 90 minute best preset? As I said in my first post, the client does not have HD playback technology (they’re in Central Asia), however, it is likely to be used in presentations (projector screen).

With many thanks.
Michael

Macbook Pro 15″, 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB 1067 MHz DDR3, Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT; OS X 10.5.8, Final Cut Pro 6.0.6

[Rafael Amador]

Being your movie just 10 minutes long, you can modify the Compressor Presets.
As you see they are designed for longer duration clips, so you can push a lot the data rate.
you can try with something like Average data Rate: 7.4 Mbps and max Data Rate: 8.3 Mbps.
You can keep your audio PCM with that data rate.
Cheers,
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com