QuickTime MPEG2 Component

[Paul Dickin]

Hi
Could be he’s still using QT 6.5.2 or earlier, where it was an option.

[Simon Carlson-thies]

Quicktime MPEG2 codec does not give you an export option, if you have compressor which if you have final cut you do you can export MPEG2 files.

Best of luck

Simon Carlson-Thies

[Brent Altomare]

[PaulD] “Could be he’s still using QT 6.5.2 or earlier, where it was an option.”

He’s using same exact version of QuickTime. We went through everything line-by-line. That was one of the things I thought, too.

Thanks for replying!

—
Brent Altomare
Groovy Like a Movie
(877) 3-GROOVY

[Brent Altomare]

[Simon Carlson-Thies] “Quicktime MPEG2 codec does not give you an export option, if you have compressor which if you have final cut you do you can export MPEG2 files.”

Well, SOMETHING gives QuickTime player an MPEG2 export option, because my editor friend has it.

We’re not using Compressor because we’re having a quality problem with it that we can’t solve. The editor who is giving us a hand has exported some of our projects using QuickTime Player and those MPEG2s don’t exhibit the same problems as the MPEG2s exported from Compresor. I had a thread over on one of the DVD forums with that quality problem and we weren’t able to solve it. If you are really good at Commpressor, please PM me (so we can keep the forum on-topic) and I’ll give you more details on the problem we’re trying to solve.

Thanks for replying!

—
Brent Altomare
Groovy Like a Movie
(877) 3-GROOVY

[Simon Carlson-thies]

Hey Brent

Does your editor friend have DVD studio pro installed? if so I think that might be the reason, since the MPEG2 codec apple sells is a playback only.

What exactly was your problem with Compressor?

Simon Carlson-Thies

[Brent Altomare]

[Simon Carlson-Thies] “Does your editor friend have DVD studio pro installed?”

He does have DVDSP installed, but so do we (as part of Final Cut Studio). We’re now beginning to think that Apple has removed the MPEG2 export out of QT7, and he still has it as a legacy from QT6. Even though he has QT7Pro currently installed, he updated from QT6Pro. We did a clean system install from Tiger disks so we started with QT7.

[Simon Carlson-Thies] “What exactly was your problem with Compressor?”

I hate to go off topic, but I’m pretty much out of ideas so here we go:

On almost all of our projects (we primarily work in DV-NTSC) when we burn DVDs, SOME of our cross-fade transitions show pretty serious MPEG artifacting (where we see large digital-looking blocks in portions of the image).

We were convinced that this was a result of not having a high enough bit-rate set in Compressor. However, we don’t want to push it past approximately 8Mbps because everything I’ve read says that will cause compatability problems with many set-top boxes.

One of our freelancers says the television station he works for doesn’t use Compressor because of quality issues like the one I’m describing, and that they use QuickTime Pro for all their MPEG2 output for DVDs.

So he can use QuickTime player at work to compress MPEG2 files, he can do it at home, he can do it in a box, he can do it with a fox, but on OUR 3 edit suites and my laptop (all configured with QuickTime Pro, the QuickTime MPEG2 component, and Final Cut Studio), we can’t seem to do it at all!

Any suggestions, advice, prayers, voodoo, etc will be much appreciated!

—
Brent Altomare
Groovy Like a Movie
(877) 3-GROOVY

[Simon Carlson-thies]

As to the mpeg component not being avalible in QT7 your probably right, now that you mention it I seem to remember the option being avalible in QT6 pro.

As to why your compression to MPEG 2 looks try this:

Try using compression markers, to keyframe compression quality at those points where you seem to be losing it. (you can do this in compressor or final cut)

Your bit rate may have some thing to do with the problem, but I would imagine it is the I-frame order on the footage you aren’t getting the quality frames where you need them.

The other thing is it could be because you work in DV, which is already heavily compressed. Personally I work with uncompressed footage so I never run into this problem.

Hope this helps

Simon Carlson-Thies

[Chris Babbitt]

Apple DID remove the export option with FCP 5. They want you to use Compressor. But, oddly enough, some people retained the export option after they upgraded. I called Apple and was told “officially” that it was removed. I’ll bet you are using 2-pass VBR in Compressor. If you are, switch to Single-pass and your problems should disappear.

[Deke Kincaid]

>>We were convinced that this was a result of not having a high enough bit-rate set in Compressor. >>However, we don’t want to push it past approximately 8Mbps because everything I’ve read says that will >>cause compatability problems with many set-top boxes.

Upping the bit rate won’t help you. This is jut a matter of understanding how mpeg compression works. Anything fast moving or fast transitions needs less B frames. Simply goto the GOP tab and change the GOP structure from “IBBP” to “IBP” and if that isn’t smooth enough, change it to “IP”.

There is a whole chapter on this stuff in the manual, you should read it 🙂

-deke

[Brent Altomare]

Thanks for all the suggestions, gang.

I should have mentioned this in my original posts, but we had tried several variations of placing compression markers (including one pass, in desperation, where we placed a compression marker in every frame of each of the bad transitions).

I also tried changing to shorter GOP structures. We’ve been through all that and the only thing that seems to show any improvement from Compressor is increasing the bit-rate past the point that is recommended for compatibility with set top boxes.

And by the way, I did R.T.F.M. as part of my troubleshooting. 😉

What has us most baffled is that the MPEG2 files exported from QuickTime Player don’t show the same issues as the ones from Compressor. Same original file, no markers, different results.

It is obvious that we are doing SOMETHING wrong because our problem seems to be pretty unique, so I’m very happy to receive any and all suggestions!

—
Brent Altomare
Groovy Like a Movie
(877) 3-GROOVY