Charles Simonson
Forum Replies Created
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Are you editing the still images on an interlaced timeline? Most likely, its the conversion from still image to video creating the quality issues you are noting. If the final display target is going to be a progressive display, then author in a progressive timeline and encode for a progressive DVD.
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Even still, there is no reason why a software encoder can’t match the quality of any hardware encoder, for any format. In fact, given that a software encoder, which has to encode from file, can spend a near infinite amount of time encoding a single frame, it should be able to ultimately deliver better quality. Although, the trade off becomes what is financially feasible given the time constraints. Often times, this is the primary reason for using MEPG-2 hardware encoders, because there isn’t much profit in the DVD authoring business and turnaround has to be very efficient, which only hardware can promise.
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While I agree that having a film-based source is almost assuredly going to give you a better encode than any video camera ever could, to say that hardware encoders are better is false. Really, a hardware encoder’s only advantage today is the ability to encode in real-time from SDI. There are quite a few software encoders out there today that can match the best quality from hardware encoders otherwise.
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You can do this after the movie has been encoded via scripting.
https://www.apple.com/applescript/quicktime/
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BitVice can certainly improve MPEG-2 encodings from certain types of sources, and if what you are getting from BitVice pleases you that much more than Compressor, then I’d say go ahead and get the full version. Compressor has an MPEG-2 encoder that is good enough for most types of content, but there is no doubt that there are times when Compressor will just fall flat on its face. I’ve seen BitVice do the same as well, but most of the time BitVice can be considered as one of the best SD MPEG-2 encoding solutions out there, even if it is measurably slower than other encoders.
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I wouldn’t call WMV encoding a nightmare on the mac any more. Hasn’t been that way for quite some time. Probably, given your situation and needs, the best product for you would be Flip4Mac’s WMV Studio Pro product. This includes a QT exporter plugin that will allow you export directly from Final Cut Pro to Windows Media at your desired settings.
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I’d second ProCoder for PC MPEG-2 encoding.
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Should be in your graphics card’s driver control panel.
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You’re fine. See this thread:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/20/856966?
Essentially, the video looks washed out initially because you are using two different renderers when playing directly from WME. -
Yeah, that sounds about right if you are really pushing the settings. I would recommend setting the complexity to 2 or 3 and see how much that helps encoding times.