[Brian Lynn]

There is no option for 0.

Based on what I’ve read if I set my closed GOP to 1 that is the same as closing the GOP every frame which should result in an all I-Frame video…

Are there any tools out there to that can analyze a video and tell me what kind of frame structure it has?

[Brian Lynn]

You’re not trying to produce this video to play across multiple WatchOUT outputs are you? If you are please refer to the Dataton documentation for WatchOUT and read up on “Video Proxies” and “Pre-Splitting video for playback”.

[Brian Lynn]

We used ProRes LT last year and had a lot of success with it. Because of one small glitch last year I am being pushed into being more Dataton compliant for this year.

The Adobe Media Encoder has actually rendered the MPEG a lot cleaner then After Effects has.

[Brian Lynn]

Apparently I had it and didn’t realize it… I think I looked at Adobe Media Encoder long ago and didn’t realize it was different than what After Effects used for rendering. I thought it was more just a stand alone set and forget encoder.

But it has done a much better job encoding the MPEG than After Effects did using the same quality settings.

Maybe I didn’t quite grasp Sorenson but I expected better quality. It looked very blocky. I don’t think this is a limitation of the trial version as the output is watermarked. It had less of a posterized look… instead it was more blocky. Very odd looking.

[Brian Lynn]

I am trying to find Adobe Media Encoder and I am slightly confused… a google search leads me mostly to Adobe’s website but to their “Flash Live Media Encoder”…

I have found one link to an actual Adobe Media Encoder download but it seems dated…

Have they updated it and changed the name possibly?

[Brian Lynn]

You are correct, I misunderstood when I was reading about the closed GOP. Its more important to be able to use a CBR vs VBR and I guess that’s another big reason ProRes is not recommended.

I would prefer to remain in the MPEG format for exactly the reasons you mentioned but some of the other providers are not happy with the compression results and I am often left disappointed as well.

Both you and the previous response recommended Sorenson Squeeze though I will take a close look at all the external compressors you both recommended.

Thanks for the reply!

[Brian Lynn]

Thanks for the response! Its interesting you say QT over After Effects for better quality rendering… the h.264 that QuickTime puts out is horrible compared to what I can get out of After Effects.

Maybe its because I am on a PC… Who knows. I should ship a file over to my Mini and try QuickTime on the Mac…

I will look into an external compression program, though I also have several content providers supplying me video and I won’t have a the time or a chance to recode them.

Thanks for the reply!

[Brian Lynn]

I am guessing that shooting faster frame rates is to reduce the motion blur between frames so I have cleaner shots to roto… if I don’t have the option to shoot faster but I can up my shutter speeds would that have the same effect?

[Brian Lynn]

I guess its good I just upgraded from CS3 to CS5 and have access to the new Mocha AE!

So basically create all the frozen images masked out first, track the shot, and then match the freeze frames to the continuous video using the track to keep them in place relative to the camera motion…?

That’s what I thought might be going on there!

Thanks for the response.
Brian

[Brian Lynn]

OH… guess I should mention I am using A# 5.5 Production Bundle…