[Brian Alexander]

So if I’m reading this right your animation is interlaced to begin with, correct? Did you ingest this from an interlaced tape by chance?

You are doing the right thing by de-interlacing the animation with Compressor using ProRes with Frame Controls turned on and output field set to Progressive – not Same As Source. Of course ProRes does not support alpha so you’ll need to change your codec in Compressor to Animation (output field progressive) if you’re trying to keep an alpha channel with your animation. This is not going to be nearly as fast as a ProRes transcode but it should do the trick.

You’re Final Cut sequence settings should be set to a Field Dominance of None to keep everything progressive based.

As far as jumpy animations go, make sure you’re not doing any frame rate conversions along the way; if your original animation was built or capturred at 29.97 fps your sequence settings should be set to 29.97 and not 30 fps or vice versa.

I would suggest you verify that your file was encoded correctly using QuickTime before you add it to your FCP project; this will save you some time troubleshooting any issues later.

[Brian Alexander]

Excellent, thanks Craig.

F4M is up to date (2.2.1.11 Flip4Mac WMV Studio Pro HD) and I understand that all of the pertinent settings have an impact on the quality of the encode; this is why I’m searching for a easy to read document on what settings to use like the h.264 document I linked to in my previous post.

The presets in F4M do not seem to help with creating good looking content and is a bit limited for HD frame sizes. I’m still not sure if this is because I’m using a Mac, it’s just the way WMV’s are, or there are specific settings I must create in order to achieve the quality I want.

Telestream advises that the highest possible quality, an archival setting, is a 1 pass VBR with the Q set at or near 100. This of course provides excellent quality but large bit rates and very large files.

I’m basing my image potential on the quality of the 1080p files in the Microsoft HD Showcase here: https://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musicandvideo/hdvideo/contentshowcase.aspx. E.g., The Discoverers is a 1080p clip, 145 MB with a TRT of 2:31. My calculations show (correct me if I’m wrong): 145 MB = 1,160 Mb/151 seconds = 7.68 Mb/sec. Correct? That’s equivalent to an h.264 bit rate for a 1080 frame size – 7,000 to 8,000 kbits/sec.

[Craig Seeman] “Certainly transitions (fade up for example) or fast moving video or graphics may need higher data rate, 2 Pass VBR, more frequent key frames.”

Should I be creating a specific number of keyframes dependent on the complexity of my material each time I encode a file? This seems counter productive; my next project, I’ll be creating over 150 wmv files. h.264 can be set to Automatic Keyframes – does WMV have a hidden equivalent?

[Craig Seeman] “What you’re seeing is the macroblocks (“pixelated” can imply many other issues).”

Ok, got it. Visible Macroblocks is what I’m seeing and like I said, these do smooth out and go away after 1 second but no more than 3 seconds into the video.

Here are my original questions again:
Is there a simple bit rate guide for creating WMV files?

Do you have to have uncompressed media to get good looking files from Flip4Mac?

Thanks again for your help here.

[Brian Alexander]

Here are some guidelines to use with h.264; it’s the perfect balance between file size and quality.

https://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/h264.html

[Brian Alexander]

I use Compressor exclusively and I’ve never noticed this before. This sounds like a specific setting or codec issue but not necessarily a Compressor problem. In addition to the Screenshot that Daniel has requested, I have a couple of questions that may help us troubleshoot your issue.

What is your source material?

What codec are you using for compression?

What is your intended output?

Are you doing any timing adjustments, frame re-sizing, or de-interlacing on your encode?

Are you using any filters on your encode?

Please let us know if you figure out what is happening in the meantime.

Thanks.

[Brian Alexander]

I would suggest that you de-interlace using an intermediate codec; either AIC or ProRes. I use ProRes because it has better color compression than AIC (4:2:2 vs 4:2:0).

h.264 is an awesome codec but it does use a lot of processing power when compressing video. A multi-pass h.264 will apply de-interlacing on each pass (up to 5 or 6 passes) whereas using ProRes is near real time; a single pass – much much faster. You can then use your new de-interlaced ProRes file to create your h.264. This will speed up your work-flow a great deal.

As far as your 16:9 issue goes, you should take care of this at the same time you de-interlace with the ProRes conversion. In your geometry settings set your intended output size and change your pixel aspect ratio to square. Again, any resizing should be done with ProRes because h.264 will take forever to do this.

Stay away from the de-interlace filter like Ed said; just make sure you de-interlace by turning your Frame Controls on and your output field set to Progressive.

Bookmark this link for future reference:
https://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/h264.html

Hope this helps.

[Brian Alexander]

I may just be stating the obvious here but if you’ve successfully converted this in Compressor, why don’t you just look in your History pane to find your completed job? Once you locate it your previous conversion, you drag the historical job to your batch window and voilà, there you have all your settings again. Double click your job settings in your batch window and you can view whatever chance settings you made in the inspector pane.

Good Luck.

[Brian Alexander]

I am a huge fan of Compressor. Sorenson Squeeze is a valid tool and costs much less than Compressor (especially if you do not use or need the rest of the Final Cut Studio suite).

Check this out, it should start you down the right path: https://pixelcorps.cachefly.net/macbreak-165-540p-h264.mov

Please share any useful tutorials you may have hidden in your bookmarks with the rest of the class.

Thanks.

[Brian Alexander]

I agree with Andy. You will take a slight hit in quality (depending on horizontal movement) anytime you de-interlace your video.

You can get excellent results with Compressor using Frame Controls (I’m sure there are other excellent tools as well) but the de-interlacing process is still tying or merging 2 interlaced fields into 1 progressive frame. You’ll get much better results de-interlacing a corporate video than you will a sports video. If you have lots of action, you would be better off shooting 720p and scaling or up-rezing to fill your 1920×1080 frame.

[Brian Alexander]

Frame controls use advanced image processing and yield excellent results. Unfortunately, frame controls can also make your encode time horribly slow if you use it the wrong way.

I suggest you take your video and transcode using an intermediate codec, either Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC) or Apple ProRes before creating your h.264 streaming file. This will save you tons of time. I use ProRes because it can handle 8 or 10 bit images plus it is uses a 4:2:2 color compression and not an 8 bit – 4:2:0 like the AIC. Anyhow, I digress, when you activate frame controls the software defaults to Output Fields: Same as source. This needs to say Progressive. Once you create this intermediate (huge), de-interlaced file, then you can create your streaming h.264.

Feel free to download my preset that I’ve made for de-interlacing here. Right click on the PD1.setting to download.

To sum up, you do not want to use frame controls when creating your streaming file. Use frame controls with an Intermediate codec when you’re re-timing, re-sizing, or de-interlacing. Create your web based file from the Intermediate file. Archive or delete your intermediate file when you’re done.

Try this compression method with a couple of seconds with your video – no need to waste all that time if it’s not going to work right the first time. (When it comes time to create your web based file and you notice a gamma shift, we’ll start or join another post.)

Let us know if this helps.