SD DVD – Best practice for Final Cut Studio 2

[Walter Biscardi]

[clctech] ”
I think this is the right process, the but the dvd’s just don’t look good to me. It seems like I could expect a lot more from even an SD DVD. The file size of my 36 minute project is only 1.73 GB.”

That is the right process, it’s just that Compressor’s quality is just so good. If you want even better quality, you have to invest into something like BitVice or Sorenson. Those yield higher quality MPEG-2’s but both cost a bit of money and they much much slower to encode than Compressor.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

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[Clctech]

If I were to use Sorenson or Bitrate, how would I get from FCP to one of those applications? Is there a way to export directly from FCP to them, or would I just create a reference file? What I like about going to Compressor is that FCP doesn’t encode anything, so the footage only gets compressed one time.

Also, can I really expect a significant improvement in encoding quality if I use one of these tools instead of Compressor? I guess I could download a trial and use it. The DVD footage would have a watermark, but that would be fine for testing.

[Chris Babbitt]

For a project of this length it is unnecessary to use VBR, and you are possibly sacrificing quality. Use CBR instead, set at 7.2-7.5.

[Clctech]

I am still new to editing. I’ve done a lot of little home movie projects using Sony Vegas Studio and Premier Elements, but this is my first experience editing with HDV and Final Cut Studio.

I’ve never really learned about bitrates. Is the purpose of VBR to encode the high motion areas using a higher bit rate and the lower motion areas using a lower bitrate, and the end result is that it saves space? With a project this small I guess I could just use a higher bitrate for everything since I don’t have to worry about space.

[Chris Detjen]

I’m not an expert, but my assumption is that VBR will use more compression during complex areas of video, and less compression on the simple areas of your video, all the while trying to keep the bit rate near the average rate set in the VBR options.

[John Pale]

[clctech] “do modify the preset a little bit to increase the VBR to 6.7 and the max bitrate to around 7.2.”

This is not a good setting. For projects under an hour, use CBR with a bit rate of no higher than 7. Above that, you might get artifacts on some DVD players…(with burned discs –not discs manufactured at a plant using replication)

You dont need VBR for this….VBR is best used for longer projects. It uses a higher bit rate for complex images and a low bit rate for simpler areas of your video. The first pass analyzes your video for this. VBR also works much better with a wider spread. 6.7 -7.2 is way too close…there is almost no difference there. Normally, you would set it to something like 4.5-7. But you dont need to have have anything encoded at less than a bit rate of 7, since your 36 minute project will easily fit on a disc….so don’t use VBR.

[Clctech]

With Final Cut Studio 2 using Compressor 3, is there any reason to continue using the Bonsai method, or have those problems been fixed in this latest version of the software?

I may try the Bonsai method today using a 2-3 minute clip and compare with what I already have.

[Rafael Amador]

“HDV video to SD DVD Using Compressor 3 and DVD SP” in:

https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/hdv_to_sd_dvd.html

For SD the Compressor pre-sets are OK but do not suit every kind of film. if your movie got a lot of movement, You better rise the bit-rate and use VBR. Allways 2 passes.
If you are not happy with the result you can try to use short GOPs. I do SD DVDs with 6f GOPs for the MPG2 and there is not comparation with the default long GOPs MPG2. Not long ago was risky to do this kind of DVDs because many players could not cope with the higher bit-rate. Today things had improved:-)
rafael

[Clctech]

Does this conversion of HDV to SD that Ken refers to still apply with the latest version of final cut studio? I didn’t use the previous version, so I don’t know if it was possible to export right to compressor. It seems like his process is adding extra compression because it means exporting to Quicktime, then converting to mpeg-2 in Compressor, whereas with this new version, you can just export right to compressor and skip the Quicktime compression.

[Rafael Amador]

[clctech] “It seems like his process is adding extra compression because it means exporting to Quicktime, then converting to mpeg-2 in Compressor”
Well, that depends of the quality whichs you export from FC. If you export a 10b uncompress this extra step don’t go to degrade the quality of your picture. You can export a full movie, a refference movie or send to Compressor from the FC time-line. The only that will change is the compression time, because with the last option all the movie is rendered again even if all your sequence is already rendered in FC. This is not the most important, but the rest of the work-flow shown in the article can be interesing for you to get a better DVD.
rafael