Chris Blair
Forum Replies Created
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Daniel Low
Sorry to be pedantic, but there’s no such thing as MPG1 (or MPG2) the correct acronym is MPEG-1 (Which stands for Motion Pictures Experts Group as I’m sure you know). MPEG-1 can in fact support resolutions up to 4096×4096 at 100Mb/s.16:9 refers to the DAR – Display Aspect Ratio not PAR – Pixel aspect ratio. Anyhow, MPEG-1 supports a number of DARs and PARs
Ok…I don’t know what pedantic means, apologize for my acronyminism (I made that up), and concerning DARs and PARs….after a while it all makes my head hurt! Actually I had never heard of DAR but it certainly makes sense….and as always…you are of course correct.
It’s good to point out that pixel aspect can vary across formats that display at 16×9, same as they can vary across formats that display at 4:3.
I was just trying to keep it simple for the original poster since he doesn’t have a ton of experience with compression…and trying to help him get his HD video into a format that others could play!
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Yup…I think that’s likely it. We exported a section of the video, brought it into Premiere CS3, then exported from there for DVD and it looked fine from the DVD. Also brought it into Vegas and did the same thing.
We rarely use either of those editing apps for actual projects, but that confirms it’s not the footage or workflow.
Thanks for the help
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Shouldn’t the folks that are using Omneon be able to give you the specs?
If you browse their website, in several places they say things like “provides support for all major video formats and bit rates including HD and SD media stored in Omneon systems using either QuickTime® or MXF.” So it looks like they want Quicktime or MXF wrappers using any codec that’s typically used with those.
For Quicktime, H264 will give you the best quality and smallest file sizes. Although I’d use the x264 codec to avoid the dreaded Quicktime H264 color problem using Apple’s H264 codec.
For MXF, you can use DVCProHD, DVCPro50, DVCPro25, MPG2, XDCAM, MPG4 (H264) and probably several more. I’d avoid DVCPro25 if possible for SD material since it “sucks!”
Be warned though, MXF can be a complicated beast to work with. It’s a wrapper that isn’t really user friendly when it comes to direct playback of files. Sure it can be done, but not typically without installing some 3rd part software or having a MXF capable NLE at your disposal. Plus you’ll need a fairly high-end encoding solution to export to MXF.
Anyway…I’d ask them what they prefer and deliver that to them rather than guess.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Andy Bis I just want to hand it in for class, but many of our projects are also used as PSA’s for local organizations and some are aired on TV. It’s frustrating because any that I shoot in HD seem to not be playable on the average person’s computer. What’s the safest codec to output to that any computer would be able to play?
A question:
Doesn’t your class have a set of standards for the format you deliver your edited projects? I haven’t been in college in 25 years, but even back then we had a set of standards to deliver a project in (back then it was 3/4″ in the video classes and spliced Super8mm in the film classes).
So it should be exported to whatever your instructor needs to view it and grade it.
As for exporting for compatibility on others PCs. The most compatible formats across platforms are:
MPG2 with audio multiplexed with video (same quality as what’s used for DVD and most PC’s can play them back) This can be used for HD or SD material, but very few consumer PC’s will be able to play back an MPG2 HD stream without choking.
MPG1 – this is a very old codec, but still gives good results at decent data rates. Any computer will play it. The drawback is the quality is only fair, even at that high data rate. I’m not sure if it can handle 16×9 pixel aspect though. Others (Daniel?) could probably answer this.
DV – this is also a very broadly compatible format. If you use the Quicktime DV codec, it will play on any Mac and any PC that has Quicktime installed. Of course it’s standard definition so you’d have to resize, but you’re going to have to resize no matter what you export to to get it to play on a wide range of PC’s
Windows Media format 9. This is actually a very underrated format/codec combination. You can get very good results with it at 3-5MB/sec data rates, and most computers will play it. Mac users can download the free Flip4Mac plug-in from Microsoft and be able to play this as well.
Quicktime using motion-JPEG-A, motion JPEG-B, video, PhotoJpeg, Sorenson and probably a couple others can give you good quality at reasonable file sizes/data rates. Again, you’ll have to resize to SD for it to play back reliably across a wide range of computers.
If you’re not familiar with encoding and codecs, I recommend you go to Rhozet’s website and read their two white papers. They’re among the best explanations I’ve seen on codecs, compression and technique.
https://www.rhozet.com/support_whitepapers.html
Lastly, there are hundreds, possibly thousands of codec/format choices. Within those, there are hundreds if not thousands of additional possible combinations of frame size, aspect ratio, frame rate, interlacing/progressive scan options, audio codecs etc. Compression can be complex. So take the time to learn about it and understand it. Rarely can you can’t just pick a preset and have it magically spit out great looking video.
Hope that helps (or makes your head hurt, take your pick).
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
I’m not trying to be contentious here….I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to answer my post and give suggestions so don’t take this post the wrong way!!!
We edit exclusively with the VelocityQ systems (3 of them) so we don’t have any way to test the 24P workflow theory.
But we had long discussions about the whole 24P/29.97 edit workflow question via the http://www.cinematography.com forum with the Panasonic varicam rep, as well as face to face with our regional rep before we bought this camera and they consistently said there are a ton of myths floating around about that issue.
Editing with their 24P footage (with pulldown) on a 29.97 timeline is no different than editing with 16mm or 35mm film telecined to video, (which we also used to do a lot of). That came directly from 2 Panasonic folks, one of whom is generally considered an expert about their varicam cameras.
Rendering or exporting doesn’t affect the fields or pulldown (as long as field order is correct, which it is). It should encode to the MPG2 file as a 29.97 file with the pulldown intact. Modern DVD’s should recognize the pulldown and handle playback fine. Again…this isn’t me saying this stuff…this is Panasonic folks.
When we export, we have the option of exporting with interlaced fields or with progressive frames, and we use interlaced (again…straight from Panasonic recommendations using 24P with pulldown). If it were a field order issue, motion graphics would stutter, still graphics would look fuzzy and out of whack, and all the video would generally look bad.
Just last week we ouput a 4×3 video for this same client (a revision of a 3 year old video) that was shot with the SDX-900 at 24P; edited with the exact same workflow, with very similar type shots, then output to DVD using the same presets and DVD authoring app.
We see none of the strobing/aliasing. In fact, some of the shots are from the exact same location (framing, angle etc.) and use the same camera moves. So the whole 24P workflow problem doesn’t hold water there.
Not to mention that exporting the offending project to MPG2 and authoring as a DVD without the 16×9 flag eliminates the strobing. That tells me there’s something going on either in the encode (it’s a fairly old Ligos encoder in the VelocityQ editing systems), or in the letterboxing instructions when it’s played to a 4×3 TV.
It also doesn’t explain why we’ve never seen this issue across hundreds of projects going out to DVD over the last 5 years using the exact same 24P workflow, many 16×9.
As I said in a previous post, we’re going to export using Carbon Coder and see what we get. I bet that fixes the issue.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Jon Geddes
Did you encode the file as 24p?It sounds like interlace issues. Either it wasn’t encoded into a 24p mpeg2 file, or somehow the fields are reversed (but this wouldn’t affect a properly encoded progressive mpeg file).
I’ve already tried encoding as a progressive MPG2 and saw only a slight improvement (if any at all). I’ve got to think it’s the 16×9 flag that instructs a DVD player to letterbox the video for a 4:3 TV. This process has to resize the video vertically to fit it in the 4:3 frame with the correct aspect ratio. The aliasing is definitely worse on 4:3 TVs. To test, I encoded the video without the 16×9 flag, burned to DVD and played on a 4:3 TV. The problem shots looked fine (of course the video was stretched vertically since it filled the 4:3 frame). So that must be the issue here.
I also played the 16×9 DVD on multiple player/TV combos and the strobing varies in intensity depending on the brand and age of the DVD player. The one we test on is old as dirt as is the TV it’s hooked to. We do that on purpose because if this 10 year old player and TV will play the DVDs, ANYTHING will.
But even a 1 year old Panasonic DVD player hooked to a new Sony Luma series LCD showed a little of the aliasing, just not as bad.
The Panasonic cameras add their own 3:2 pulldown during the recording process and our NLE systems don’t offer pulldown removal or anything like that upon capture, so all projects are edited as 29.97 timelines with the pulldown left intact. So when we encode, we just export normally (rather than 24P).
There’s never been an issue unitl these last two projects. This is a period that covers literally hundreds of projects using thousands of shots of all varieties.
It’s not a field order issue as more than just the few shots mentioned would exhibit aliasing and strobing. So I think that only leaves the letterboxing flag that fits the video to the 4:3 frame. I’ll probably encode using Carbon Coder for the final output, which has a ton more options. That should significantly reduce the problem.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Well I’ll be….you’re right!
Wonder why Vyvx’s specs are different? Or at least they were last fall when we were using them extensively. We’re not using them at the moment for anything.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Ron Lindeboom
It is a fairly common occurrence and credit card companies charge extra because these types of transactions have a more common frequency of fraud.Well that makes sense. Wonder why our local bank didn’t charge differently if we swiped it or keyed it in? It was the same fee.
Zane Barker
Its does a LOT more then just ringing people out….I NEVER said that that one software was for every one, but it is very good software. Having all your transactions go through something like that can provide a lot of useful information…I wasn’t trying to be harsh. I just don’t believe an advertising, marketing or production business could justify the expense of a dedicated computer system like that unless credit card transactions were key to sales.
Quickbooks collects all the information you could ever want about clients, sales, trends etc. Peachtree does too…and most businesses are going to be using one of those two for accounting. For us, the only benefit of being able to take credit cards is to get paid quickly by the clients that use them, and in the case of the client that forces us to take AMEX, it sucks over $30,000 a year out of our pocket.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
john sharaf
I’m at a loss myself to think of any presets (other than 180 degree shutter) that would affect the film like motion from a video camera. Of course there are gamma, detail, knee, matrix and other settings (presets) that make video more filmic or filmlike, in addition to the biggy being 24fps in progressive mode with half shutter (180 degrees aka 1/48th of a second).John,
I would’ve agreed with you 100% until we started using Panasonic 2/3″ cameras with the CineGamma technology. We were initially extremely disappointed with the SDX-900 we bought back in 2004 because by just switching to the 24P mode and adjusting the shutter settings to their recommendations resulted in footage that was literally impossible to watch it was so jerky.
We called them and they (along with many other users on the Cinematography.com forums) urged us to just load the free scene files that Panasonic had on their website. Like you, I thought, “how could these make a difference in the motion?” But I relented, downloaded them and then transferred them to the SD card of the camera, then loaded one and tested it at 24P. I was amazed. It looked totally different. Just to compare…I reset the camera to it’s factory defaults, then just turned on 24P and adjusted the electronic shutter to what the manual instructed for 24P shooting (it approximated 1/48th of a second)…and motion returned to looking like dog crap. I tried the shutter at it’s default and played around with a dozen other settings. Still looked like crap.
I then re-loaded the scene file from the SD card…and AGAIN…it looked great!
I can’t explain it…and I don’t have the time or inclination to figure it out, but there’s something about the combination of settings in their scene files that produces smoother motion when using 24P.
If I’m not mistaken…I believe those scene files will work across all their lines of cinema style video cameras, including the DVX and HVX line.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
I don’t think Abobe Media Encoder can add the VBI pad that DG wants. At least not the versions we have. I think Episode, Carbon Coder and Digital Rapids Stream software are the only ones capable of doing it the way they want. Unless there are some hack workarounds for the other encoders out there.
We used DG/FastChannel for a number of years for one big client and they’re a nightmare to work with.
Vyvx is much more customer service oriented and doesn’t have the hoop jumping 720×512 requirement. But of course you have to use who your client is paying. I’ve never understood how DG/FastChannel has overcome their poor customer service and accounting deficiencies. They regularly overcharged us and it would take months to straighten out back when we had to use them.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com