Charles Simonson
Forum Replies Created
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Also, with most Windows Media encoders, the peak bit rate of a constrained VBR encode refers to the max average a bit rate can achieve over the specified buffer time zone. So, if your peak is set to 18Mbps, and the buffer is set to 5 seconds, then for that 5 seconds, the peak is allowed to go over 18Mb, to even say 22Mb if necessary, as long as the average for any five seconds including that 22Mb frames aren’t over 18Mbps total. If the encoder you are using uses this method, and you need tight control over the max bit rate that can be applied, you need to either set the buffer time lower or the peak bit rate lower and closer to the average bit rate than you normally would with other codecs.
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Ben Waggonner has some good books available. Look for one of his posts on this board and his sig will have the info.
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I think Dragon Burn may be trying to re-encode the files. Not too familiar with that app (I use Toast), but for MPEG-2 and CDs, there is really only one format that will work for compatibilty with STBs, which is SVCD. But SVCD has a format resolution max of 480×480. Otherwise, if you are just burning a data CD and want to store the MPEG-2s as files on the disc, then there should be no re-encoding and the file size that is burned should be the file size as it is encoded by CM and reported by the Finder.
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The standard Sorenson encoder included with QT Pro is not that great, and to get really efficient encoding results with Sorenson Video 3 you need their Pro encoder codec. There are also much better tools for encoding video out there, such as Popwire’s Compression Master 3 and Sorenson’s Squeeze 4. If you are really only worried about SV3 encoding and want a simple to use app, then I would recommend Squeeze. If you are looking for a more advanced and feature rich app, then I would suggest Compression Master and its MPEG-4 encoders. For the audio, I would suggest either MP3 or AAC. IMA is an OK codec and will work well for you as well if all you have is the basic QT Pro Exporter from your apps.
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So what you want to do is encode your video track to an M2V and then export the audio to an Uncompressed format (either WAV or AIFF). Then, you can either mux the two together in MPEG StreamClip (the audio will be registered as PCM) or you can mux them with BitVice Helper, which will encode the audio to MP2 and then mux the video and audio together, saving you some disk space. They would likely prefer the PCM audio version however.
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I would suggest all of the above if you are planning to encode that type of video. Also, testing interlaced and progressive source if necessary is good.
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The encoder that Apple provides for H.264 is very good, but as you note, there are times with certain source formats where it can produce undesirable color issues. This is where an app like Cleaner 6.5 would help if it were available. Squeeze’s H.264 encoder is only so-so, and therefore it may not be an option because of its overall final quality. Compressor offers some color adjusting options so that you can compensate for the source to the output, but the controls are rather basic. The other options on the mac are Popwire Compression Master 3.2, which produces very good quality and excellent color, but the encoding speed may not be ideal if you are in a crunch and using its best quality mode. On the mac, it is probably your best bet however if color is a major concern. The PC has some good encoders as well, but there are currently quite a few issues with most in what source formats are supported (i.e. AVI only) or whether or not the encodes are compatible with QT playback.
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While I’ll wholeheartedly agree that the Player is a huge piece of bloated crap on the PC, saying there are problems with the quality of RealVideo 10 is incorrect. In fact, there are a few encoders that do an excellent job compressing to RealVideo 10 and the quality differences is very negligible compared to H264 and WMV9 for web video, especially at HD resolutions. And if you consider the speed at which you can encode RealVideo 10 with software compared to the others, there could be many advantages to be gained. Unfortunately, because the Player is so bloated with spyware and wanting to control all decoding for all formats, it has made its relevance rather minimal and there are many users who loathe the software.
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Compressor is very unlikely to offer any performance improvements over QT, because they both use the same engine. But, with Compressor, you can enable grid encoding, which can result in about a 6x performance increase on the proper network and node machines. If batching is all you need, then there is an Automater action available from Apple’s website that can export multiple movies to a particular format.
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I know that Canopus and Avid have software that can each edit DVCPRO HD natively. Whether that means that the DVCPRO HD is then available for other apps to use, I am not certain. One workaround is to print the project to tape and then do an uncompressed AVI capture on Windows with an HD SDI capture card and use it in AF.