Andrius Simutis
Forum Replies Created
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Wavs are essentially the same as .aif so that’s the way you want to go. Make sure you choose the 48khz setting so that your audio doesn’t drift when you try to line it up with your footage.
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For synching audio without the fuss, try pluraleyes. It does it for you.
https://www.singularsoftware.com/pluraleyes.html -
CCEMP is under a grand and uses the Compressor interface. That’s not cheap for the hobbyist, but a bargain for a pro.
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Cinemacraft!
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As others have pointed out, getting the most out of an MPEG2 compression isn’t just a set it and forget it affair, especially with Compressor. You can get a little bit better quality by knowing your settings and avoiding some of the nastiness that happens in downsampling without frame controls, but the problem is still that Compressor’s MPEG2 implementation is a little weak compared to the higher end tools.
I’ve made plenty of DVDs that hold up in comparison to the original HD content. Are they exact matches? Of course not because obviously the resolution is lower, but when you compress it right, and play it back on a good upscaling player connected over HDMI you can achieve an image that is close enough to fool most viewers. If you take that same HD content and compress it with a single pass encoder like Compressor without doing anything to ensure a smooth downscaling, then play it back over a composite cable to a HD set, you’re going to see a lot of the artifacts, stairsteps, mosquitoeing, and even color space issues. -
If you shot it DVCPro NTSC you should capture and edit it DVCPro NTSC and then export using current settings which will also be DVCPro NTSC. If you compress it into any other format you’re just introducing artifacts that will become big ugly blocks when it gets compressed (again) into MPEG2.
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A few things could be causing this. A bad picture to start? If your material is already compressed, compressor will exaggerate that compression when it goes to MPEG2. H264 and AVC look great the first time, but they don’t hold up so well when recompressed.
Bit rate. 6.4 is plenty of bandwidth, even for Compressor’s shoddy MPEG2 implementation, but you might want to give it a little more breathing room on the top end, like 8.0 for the max.
HD – SD downconversion. If your source is HD, make sure you enable the frame controls. Without it you’ll get lousy results. If you have the time, set these to best.
Compressor. It’s not a bad program overall, but compressor really, shockingly, horribly, lacks good MPEG2 compression. You say you want Hollywood DVD compression, so take a guess at how many A list DVDs use compressor…none. The cinemacraft solution is better, but it’s a thousand bucks and it only does MPEG2. -
A few things could be causing this. A bad picture to start? If your material is already compressed, compressor will exaggerate that compression when it goes to MPEG2. H264 and AVC look great the first time, but they don’t hold up so well when recompressed.
Bit rate. 6.4 is plenty of bandwidth, even for Compressor’s shabby MPEG2 implementation, but you might want to give it a little more breathing room on the top end, like 8.0 for the max.
HD – SD downconversion. If your source is HD, make sure you enable the frame controls. Without it you’ll get lousy results. If you have the time, set these to best.
Compressor. It’s not a bad program overall, but compressor really, shockingly, horribly, lacks good MPEG2 compression. You say you want Hollywood DVD compression, so take a guess at how many A list DVDs use compressor…none. The cinemacraft solution is better, but it’s a thousand bucks and it only does MPEG2. -
What gives? Gamma, that’s what. There’s a display difference between the 1.8 and 2.2 Gamma levels. Your footage isn’t changing, just the way it’s displayed.
When you say you’re going to get a hardware encode later, can I ask why? The hardware encoders aren’t nearly as good as what you can do with the better software encoders today. (BTW, I don’t consider compressor to be one of those better solutions today as far as MPEG2 is concerned.) Any studio that is selling you on their “state of the art/Hollywood” hardware compression card is full of it. They might still be making the payments on that SD2000 card, but it’s hardly the best compression solution these days. If they’re worth paying to do the job, they’ll have an experienced compressionist who knows the tools and can use the best one to give you the results you’re paying for.
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Keep in mind that this will only secure the disc in a DVD player, and then just barely. Many players have “random play” buttons that will jump around and play different titles on the disc, and if you’re not careful about which UOPs you disable the viewer can just jump right past your keycode.
Just about anyone on a computer can rip the content from the disc fairly easily, so this key code would be little more than a speedbump to them.