[Ben Waggoner]

Just make a TIFF with an alpha. That should work.

Photoshop’s help is pretty comprehensive.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

That shouldn’t be happening?

Are you running with the new Service Pack?

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

For playback? a 2×2.5 G5 and a 1.33 PB.

Automatic should be fine. Your problem is that you’re using an insanely high data rate for H.264 (which compresses to about 1/10th the size of DVC Pro HD at the same quality level).

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

Let me guess – you’re using SV3 Pro with Bidirectional Prediction turned on? Turn that option off. Bidirectional prediction, unless you’re in Cleaner 6, delays video two frames relative to audio.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

Compression Master 3.1 can do .MOV to .WMV. It’s the most flexible encoding tool on the Mac today.

The other good solution is Sorenson Squeeze, which focuses on ease of use.

Unfortunately, Autodesk appears not to have done any engineering on Cleaner for nearly two years. It hasn’t been officially cancelled, but there haven’t been any signs of life either.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

A full 1920×1080 24p really need a fast G5 for playback – what were you testing on? The 12-fps is a classic sign that B-frames are getting dropped due to high CPU load. A lower data rate can often help there as well. 90% of DVCPRO-HD is 90 Mbps! Try 9 Mbps and see if that works any better for you.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

Yeah, that’s an annoying issue with 4.1 – it assumes all non-square source is 4:3.

You’ll have to uncheck “maintain aspect ratio” and manually enter a frame size appropriate for your source size. E.g, if you have 16:9 full screen source, 432×240 would work nicely.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

1. File size is data rate * duration, so that won’t change. The 2-pass codec can offer a little better quality at the same data rate in theory, but the better preprocessing of CM3.1 might provide a bigger quality boost than that.

2. Yes, roughly twice as fast, since there is only a single pass. Probably better than that yet, since CM3.1 is well optimized for current Macs, and Cleaner hasn’t had any optimization in over two years. CM’s relative speed advantage is likely to be greater on a G5 than on a G4.

3. No, but you wouldn’t want to. The filters Popwire supplies are a lot higher quality.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

And rerendering from 4:1:1 to 4:2:0 doesn’t help. What does help is to render from an NLE as 4:2:2 when using 4:1:1 source, so all effects, motion graphics, titles, etcetera get rendered as full resolution.

DV25 should only be treated as an acquisition format, not a post format.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html

[Ben Waggoner]

I’d check out Main Concept. They have a professional grade encoder for Mac now, and it does fine MPEG-1.

My Book: https://www.benwaggoner.com/books.htm
Squeeze and ProCoder tutorials: https://www.classondemand.net/benwaggoner/
Compression Class at Stanford: https://www.digitalmediaacademy.org/compression.html