Chris Blair
Forum Replies Created
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Each station or cable outlet will have their own specifications. So you need to ask them. Most accept either MPEG2 or H.264/mov files.
Most want 720×480, progressive preferred, if interlaced, upper is usually preferred but some stations take either. Data rates are usually 12Mb/sec or higher for MPEG2, and 2500KB/sec or higher for H.264/Quicktime. Audio is typically 16 bit 48khz at at least 192kb/sec and usually at -12dB digital audio standard.
But some stations have odd specs. Just last week one station wanted their spots with 0 IRE black. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen a station ask for that and we’ve been doing digital uploads since the early part of this decade.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
Play it on other players like VLC to see how it displays. As Rich points out, Quicktime probably isn’t recognizing aspect ratio correctly with the file format.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
Not sure if it’s an option, but we use Cineform codecs for HD stuff and they’ll play on almost anything. The codecs are a little pricey but they’re worth it if you need really small file sizes and virtually transparent compression. I literally can’t tell the difference between an uncompressed HD file and a cineform compressed one that’s less than a tenth the size…and that’s in scenes with animated gradients and heavy graphics, which usually suffer quite a bit.
I’m surprised ProRes won’t play smoothly as it’s a similar codec in terms of how it compresses and is decoded.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
Why not just use the DV originals for any SD work? No sense degrading the image further to use a particular codec for SD work.
Up-rezzing DV encoded footage to ProRes HD is going to look like dog poo and since you’re resizing it’s not surprising you would have field issues. You would just have to play around until you get the least objectionable encode.
Apple’s White Paper on their web-site only talks about HD through the whole paper…but I found some forum discussions on Apple and Final Cut forums about ProRes SD …so guess it’s possible to go to that. I don’t see the advantage for SD footage though.
https://images.apple.com/finalcutstudio/resources/white_papers/L342568A_ProRes_WP.pdf
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
Quicktime reports some weird things in it’s inspector. But your MPEG2 settings show 720×576 at 16:9, which would basically be changing your pixel size from square (1024×576) to rectangular. So you’re fine there.
The same thing happens in NTSC world with Quicktime H.264. I can output a 720×486 rectangular pixel 16:9 video and using Quicktime I HAVE to output an 864×486 file to get it to display properly in Quicktime.
The rest of your settings look ok to me, so maybe somebody else can chime in.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
Have you tried playing the file on a different media player…like say VLC? It could be a player issue and not a file issue. It would be very odd to encode a file and only see an issue in the playback where you say you’re seeing it.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
Michel Domaine wrote:
-mpeg4 at the best
-quicktime h264 at the best
-mpeg2 at vbr average bitrate 18, pick bitrate 30You’d have to provide a lot more details about your settings before anyone could help. That’s not really enough information. H.264 can look as good as MPEG2 at nearly half the data rate, so you shouldn’t see as big a difference in quality. MPEG2 can be compressed to both SD and HD sizes, and you’re using square pixel, widescreen SD Pal at 1024×576. My guess is you have the pixel aspect set wrong in your settings and it’s resizing based on that….but that’s just a guess.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
Bruce Spangler wrote: The source is film which I assume was then put through telecine.
You need to confirm what your source material is first. It may not have been telecined and may very well be digitized at 24P. I believe Quicktime will tell you everything you need to know (Final Cut probably will too) about the clips or file.
Next, when you find out what the source material is, check your project settings…. specifically whether it’s progressive or interlaced and what frame rate.
Bottom line, your project in Final Cut should match your footage specs. Then when you go to export (regardless of what you use), you’ll be doing it from an informed perspective, knowing whether your footage/project is progressive already or interlaced.
The 10 bit stuff is irrelevant to your problem.
Others that work with Final Cut daily might be able to offer more insight too.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
We’d need a lot more information about your source file and the settings and software and work flow you’re using. My guess would be that you’re checking de-interlacing but also checking that the file be exported as interlaced instead of progessive, but that’s a HUGE guess given the lack of info.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
Scott Sherrif: 1. It is free. Of course, you get what you pay for, but since it is a free way to promote your business, why not use it.
Lots of great posts about this subject (enjoyed Mike’s conversation)…but one huge misnomer is that social media is “free” and that it’s quick and easy.
It’s free from the standpoint that setting up a page doesn’t cost money, but in my world, my time is worth a lot. Just in the last 3 years we brought our website in-house, started a blog, started a regular email newsletter, created a YouTube page and have made a concerted effort to regularly contact clients and potential clients through regular email. Those 5 things have added probably 20-25 hours of tasks to my workload per month, sometimes more. Has it been worth it? Yes, but to now add several more hours of work learning, setting up and maintaining a Facebook page just isn’t an option…especially since our sales have suffered from the down economy and we sadly had to lay off a long-time employee a couple months back. That increased everyone’s workload just a little more.
I think many companies big and small are in the same boat. They’d like to get more into social media, but if you don’t make a commitment to it, it’s not going to be much good for you…and many people just don’t see how they can fit it into an already bloated schedule. That time commitment costs something, be it ignoring another equally important promotional task or taking away some of the time you try to now spend with your family etc.
Like most social media, I think companies need to gauge whether they have something to say. I think websites are social media sites, and certainly blogs are as well. How many times have you visited somebody’s website and it be confusing and devoid of basic information or samples of their work?
To me, it makes no sense to spend time setting up a social media site if you don’t at least have a decent website. How many times have you seen somebody promote their blog, only to visit the site and see posts about mundane subjects that their own family would be bored by? Again, in my opinion a blog like that does more harm than good because the company or person has nothing of relevance to say. People are savvy and they can see right through a company’s attempt to “sell” by jumping on facebook or twitter or blog bandwagon.
I visited one company’s blog and was at first impressed by their posts about WordPress, which I’ve taken a liking to in the last year. UNTIL I got a few pages in and started seeing the SAME posts buried five pages deep in a category with the same article heading about websites and wordpress along with the names of cities in their region. So this company was taking the knowledge that blogs get highly ranked by search engines and using it to their advantage by posting the SAME article, with the same heading but changing the names of cities and regions in the heading and the article (in about a 200 mile radius of them). Why? because a company in Skokie does a google search for “website design in Skokie” and guess who’s blog article comes up? Yep…the guys mentioned above. Is this good use of a blog or is this abuse? I’m not really sure, but my gut reaction is it’s abuse…followed by my second reaction of, “I wish I thought of that.” Unfortunately, I don’t have the moxie to design our blog that way and I just think that’s cheating. I figured out what they were doing after 5 minutes on their site and I’m sure other savvy marketing people do too.
Anyway…social media is sure a hot topic, but I think it’s difficult (if not impossible) to measure its value for small to medium size businesses, especially in monetary terms. If you have the time to devote to it and have something to say, it certainly cannot hurt and likely can help from a purely PR standpoint.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog