Charles Simonson
Forum Replies Created
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Yeah, since Episode is now owned by Telestream which also owns the Flip4Mac brand, it is only a matter of time until the best parts of the F4M WMV encoder series is integrated into Episode. Personally, I am quite fond of Episode’s current WMV encoding capabilities, especially its speed compared to the standalone components, but I do understand the reasoning for those who prefer the output of F4M. As far as your other formats, Episode is definitely the best way to go, as it has the best MPEG-4 encoders on the market for 3GPP and iPod. And there is now a very capable H264 encoder in the latest release.
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The option of exporting a file first (preferably 10bit uncompressed) and then using a PC to encode will be much more efficient and give you many more options. That is, if going to a PC is an acceptable option for you. If not, then F4M is a fine choice.
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For MPEG-1, I wouldn’t recommend Cleaner 6. If you are looking for a free app, ffmpegX is a pretty good tool, albeit with a somewhat steep learning curve.
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Well, 1150kbps is very very low for an MPEG-2 bit rate at full frame size. Some DVD players will not play an encode below 2200kbps, so be aware of that. But in order to play the file back in QT, the system you are attempting to play the file back on must have the QT MPEG-2 decoder installed. Final Cut Studio includes this, but the standard QT or QT Pro does not. As far as the audio, that shouldn’t be a problem if you encode to MP2 or AC-3.
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It usually is faster to use the internal hard drives. On a Quad G5 2.5GHz, I get about 1x to 1.1x encode times. So, on a Dual G5 2GHz, I could expect that similar encodes could be up to 2.5x due to Apple’s encoder being capable of using multiple cores. And if you were to enable some of the more “advanced” tools in Compressor 2, then this could add even longer encode times.
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Mostly it doesn’t get mentioned because there are better solutions out there that use better software and encoders.
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An MPEG program stream does not have a metadata layer like QT or Windows Media does.
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I don’t remember if Squeeze has the setting, but is it possible that you are encoding to a predetermined size instead of a specific bit rate? If so, that would explain why longer movies don’t look as good as shorter ones.
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Hmmm. The gamma issue has been around for quite some time so this is not surprising to hear. I was hoping it was a conversion issue from 10bit to 8bit when Compressor was encoding, but I guess not. A couple of other things to try are to test an export from an Animation codec and None codec source. The only thing I can think of is that it is likely a profile issue with the H264 decoder. For the iPod, it is using the baseline profile, but for your other encodes it uses the main profile. I wonder if you were to download Episode from Flip4Mac and encode with similar settings if the issue were there as well?
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Is that the new iPod setting that allows 640w resolutions? Are you encoding to iPod with Compressor as well? And have you tried converting the DPX files to 8bit instead of 10bit?