Charles Simonson
Forum Replies Created
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I would try to avoid Squeeze for compressing MPEG-2, but if you must and want to fit 3 hours onto a single layer DVD-R, then I would suggest encoding at 352×480. At that size, you can encode using a lower bit rate, and while the output may be a little bit softer than full resolution, you should be able to avoid most artifacts that would be noticable at low bit rates for D1 sized encodings. Now, if you were willing to use a Double Layer disc for burning the DVD, then you wouldn’t have too much to worry about it.
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VD and GE are free apps for the PC and both can work from either file based or tape based sources.
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Likely a Squeeze issue. Why don’t you just save yourself these headaches and buy ProCoder and be done with it?
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This is most likely due to your source being a different color formar than the Photo-JPEG codec. P-JPEG at 76% and above is a 4:4:4 codec. Below it is 4:2:2. If your source is YUV 4:1:1, 4:2:0, 3:1:1, or RGB, then it is possible that Cleaner is just doing a bad job of converting it. If you are using Mac OS X 10.4, then you can just use automater to batch a bunch of exports using QT.
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No experience on the Mac Pros yet, but I would expect Compressor to do a pretty good job on lowering your encoding times on it. Of course, you will need the Compressor version that comes with FCP 5.1 for Universal Binary compatibility, but that shouldn’t be unexpected. The main issue with the Mac Pro is if some of your apps that you use regularly aren’t UB yet (like Adobe’s apps). In that case, those apps will likely run faster on your Dual G5.
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How is what I suggested any more effort than using Squeeze to convert to AVI? If you have the right tools, then it doesn’t require any more effort at all. In fact, I would bet that printing to tape and then recapturing would be faster than a software conversion anyway.
If you have seen any of my previous posts on the subject, you will note what my personal opinion of Squeeze is. There are way too many issues and limitations for me to recommend it to anyone who wants to use it beyond its default settings. And as I stated, you shouldn’t need to go back to Cleaner 5, as VD and GE are both capable of doing what you need. But if Cleaner 5 works for you (Cleaner 5 was a pretty darn good app in its day and is good to just keep lying around for a rainy day in any case), then great.
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As I said earlier, you just need to convert this from a 10bit QT to a v210 AVI. Both are the same format so there should not be any issue. AVISynth and a combination of GraphEdit or VirtualDub on the PC should be able to do this for you with the right plugins. Likely, the simplest way to do this is to print to tape from FCP and then recapture on a PC in an app like VirtualDub. If you have a AJA or BlackMagic capture card, then this is really easy as there are drivers for both platforms. Also, instead of capturing v210, becuase this is only for display purposes, I would recommend capturing the AVI in YUY2 format.
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On a non-internet connected PC that has a motherboard which doesn’t require much cooling (like the mac mini with the core solo proc), I would expect reliability to be quite good. By using software like VLC, you could continuously repeat the movie. I recommend this because my personal experience with my HD DVD player and using DVD-R discs has not been that positive.
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Personally, I wouldn’t worry about HD DVD at this time until the creation process becomes more prevalent and reliable. Currently, Apple’s DVD Studio Pro can build HD DVD projects (with verying degrees of success depending on features implented), but should really only be used with MPEG-2 assets. On the PC, ULead MovieFactory 5 can build HD DVD projects, and from what I understand, success is more likely. But again, ULead only works with MPEG-2 assets.
This wouldn’t be a problem for you as you are already using HDV sources, but the thing is, for roughly the same price as an HD DVD player, you can buy a small PC or mac mini and put the video on the computer’s hard drive and play out over DVI. This would allow you to use a much higher bit rate, and would also allow you to use the native HDV edited project source for play out instead of having to re-encode it to fit 30 minutes of HD onto a dual layer DVD+R.
As far as decoding, I don’t know what you’re looking to do there. If you want to use the edited HDV project as a source to transcode to other formats in Squeeze, then you should be fine. If you are asking if Squeeze can decode an HD DVD disc, then no. The only PC software that I know of that can play back HD DVDs is the software included with the Toshiba laptops.
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Your source is 8bit YUV; when you convert to AVI with QT Pro, you are converting to 24bit RGB, thus the three times larger size. You definitely do not want to go this route! F4M is just an extension for Windows Media 9 in QT Player and there is not separate player, so I am at a loss as to what you mean here. If you need to convert the QT movie for PC compatibility, convert it to 10bit so that apps that can read and play v210 files will be compatible with it. Media Player Classic and sometimes VirtualDub will work fine with this type of file. VLC is another option. If you need to compress on a PC, then ProCoder and Squeeze should work fine as well.