[Akbar Ukani]

Trust me…you can’t go wrong with the XDCAMs EX1…they are a grand over your budget, but the quality is superior than any Panasonics/Canon in its class…if its a long term investment then a 1000 bucks over 4 years is nothing

[Akbar Ukani]

Hey..Just a suggestion….why don’t you take XDCAM EX footage and run it through MPEG Stream Clip…this way you’ll be scaling down 1920×1080 instead of scaling up 1440×1080…..I dont think you should expect that much of a quality loss…you can try the Apple Pro Res 4444 codec if you have FCS 3..

[Akbar Ukani]

Did you find a solution to this matter? I am having the same problem

[Akbar Ukani]

Bryant,

You and I are in the same boat with the same kind of a machine. I highly recommend that you invest in a Matrox Compress HD card for the Mac. It works directly with Compressor 3.0 or above. It encodes in real time with pretty good results. Your 1 hour sequence would have taken 1 hour to make the H.264 file.

Of course, authoring is a different story. I had similar problems and I am still having similar problems, but I eventually got my bluRay authored after a few hours….Quite frankly if you ask me Encore CS4 for a mac is a piece of junk, but unfortunately that is the only option I have to author good bluRays…Toast 10 just doesn’t cut it…I do use it to burn the BluRay though

*Note that the Mac version of the Compress HD card doesn’t work with Adobe Media Encoder*

Have you had any problems with Audio not being in sync with the Video?

[Akbar Ukani]

I am a fairly new Encore user and having problems of my own with the H.264 audio and video file not being in sync when the bluRay is finalized, but I have had the same problem with Encore initially. I eventually used the Matrox Compress HD card to encode the file using Mac’s Compressor. Not sure if you are on a Mac or Windows, but you may want to use an alternate option to encode your file…..Hope I was of some help.

[Akbar Ukani]

Great..I appreciate the help..I’ll give it a try and see what happens..Thanks once again

[Akbar Ukani]

Hey,

In order to create the Reference file, here is what I did after exporting the xdcam clips from my Camera

1. Within Final Cut, I create a new sequence with the following settings

Frame Size: 1920×1080 with HDTV 1080i Aspect Ratio
Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square
Editing Timebase: 23.98

Quicktime Video Settings
Compressor: xdcam ex 1080p24 (35Mbits per second VBR)
Quality 100%

2. I ingest the footage on the timeline and edit as necessary.

3. After editing, I right click on the sequence and select “export”->Quicktime Movie. This is where I change the Quicktime Video Settings. Everything I mentioned above is the same, EXCEPT the Quicktime Video Settings. I change that to “Apple Pro Res”. In addition, I have even made the QT Reference file with the compressor settings as “XDCAM EX 1080p24 (35Mbits per second VBR), but without any luck.

To keep everything in one post, I am reposting the steps I take further to produce the result

4. Bring the QT Ref File in Compressor 3.5.1, and select the DVD Best 90min MPEG-2 Codec (2 Pass VBR Best).

5. Turn On Frame Controls and leave all the settings as they are. Since its Progressive Material, I am not modifying the de-interlace options. However, I do set the “Anti-Alias” slider all the way to 100. (The QT Ref File is only 10 Seconds Long for testing purposes)

The Font setting with LiveType is “Skia Regular”…The text Size is 100…Its Red with a black outline (weight of 3.3 pixels)

Hope this helps..Thank you once again sir.

[Akbar Ukani]

Hey David…I appreciate you responding to my inquiry

The QT Reference file is in ProRes and I am down converting it into MPEG-2 for DVD Studio Pro 4. I am using Compressor 3.5.1.

As far as the TV, well its a brand new HD television from Samsung so I don’t think that would be the fix.

[Akbar Ukani]

Encore has to be one of the most frustrating authoring softwares (esp for the mac), none the less, I have no choice but to use it because only Steve Jobs knows why the heck he isn’t releasing FCS that has blu-ray authoring capabilities…anyhow this rant is for another post…

this audio sync problem can be resolved by setting the “out-point” of the audio file to match the “out-point” of the video…In order to do this, follow the steps below

1. Double click on the timeline to open it
2. In the timeline, click the audio track and open the “properties” tab where you can set the “in-point” and “out-point”. Make sure that the “out-point” of the audio and video track is the same.

this bug cost me a week, 3 blu-ray discs and a few grey hairs….

[Akbar Ukani]

Well…I finally got it..The Data Recovery Services was able to retrieve all 16GB of data from the corrupted Card….of course I had a ancy customer breathing on my neck, but what a relief….thats the last of SDHC cards I am ever going to use….the 2 Transcend ones I have are only for backup purposes….I am happy spending 200 bucks or so on Sandisk SxS cards…atleast I have the peace of mind when recording a shoot…..Thank you guys for all your help…oh by the way, the I/O controller on the card took a dump and it never could completely write the metadata to the Table of Contents on the card…..Thanks guys for all the positive comments…Much appreciated =)

Akbar