[Chris Borjis]

Forgot to say you should get absolutely excellent picture quality if you stick with those settings.

There is no reason at all for it too look bad unless compressor is a bogus encoder (find hard to believe)

With those settings in Tsunami, there would be no pixelization. It would be a crisp clean picture.

If its DV or VHS material you will see some compression (deep reds and angles) but thats because of DV and VHS not giving you much to begin with.

[Chris Borjis]

If it were me I would change a few settings to:

max bitrate: 7,500
average: 6,000

Closed GOP Size: 6, Structure: IBBPBBPBBP
(I:1 B:2 P:3)

(This smaller gop will help increase the quality)

It’s usually not a good idea to do color correction in the encoder
as it usually adds a lot more time to the compression job than if you
just color corrected the timeline plus the results may not be exactly as expected.

Audio looks right, but I would definitely compress it to AC-3 at 256kbps minimum. This way you have less chance of stuttering on playback and a lot more room for bits going to video. Yet the sound quality will be nearly exactly the same.

[Chris Borjis]

It’s better. Don’t be worried about the p options. It still records to tape at 29.97.

You’ll get much higher quality/resolution than a vx2100 could ever hope for.

The DVX100b is the best thing you could do.

[Chris Borjis]

Yeah just pop it in a set top and show him how sharp it is there.

Then confirm it with him by downloading some of the demo clips
from wmvhd.com to a win2k or xp system with windows media9 or 10 installed.

He’ll be impressed with a picture that looks “the way it ought to” in his eyes.

[Chris Borjis]

You probably shouldn’t exceed 7,500 on the bitrate and be sure
your audio is AC-3 (compressor makes ac-3 files now)

what were your GOP settings?

Is compressor worse than Tsunami?

I’ve heard people say compressor is a great tool.
I definitely want to keep everything as efficient as possible
for workflow. If there are lots of settings to control there
must be a way to maximize its output to good quality video

[Chris Borjis]

De-interlacing has always looked worse to my eyes. and like another person said, you’ll have issues if it goes into a set top player.

What nobody has addressed (and your boss complained about) is the soft picture.

DVD Video uses non-square pixels which looks great on a TV but lousy
on a computer monitor which is square pixels.

This problem will be solved shortly though. The High-Definition content of Blu-Ray / HD-DVD is square pixel based and thus will produce an incredibly sharp image on your pc monitor. WMV-HD files demonstrate this.

So tell him just to what a few more months lol.

[Chris Borjis]

I would sure like to know this as well.
I’ve got a quad G5 on the way and will be doing a lot of DVD work
there. Exporting to a pc just for mpeg encoding shouldn’t be
necessary imo.

As to the stepping, you will see some of that no matter what you
do as mpeg is unfortunately an 8-bit format and doesn’t have
the extra bits to make that gradient smooth. It should not be
so bad that it looks posterized though. if thats what your seeing
there must be a way to make that look better.

[Chris Borjis]

The DVX100a is superior to all other sd dv cameras in
that price range.

But I would do as the previous poster suggests.

Spend a little more on a Sony FX/1 or Z1.

If your under controlled lighting situations, you can
save a bundle and get the HC-1.

[Chris Borjis]

[Noah Kadner] “Ever see The Untouchables? “What are you prepared to do?””

LOL Noah

I like your sense of humor!

[Chris Borjis]

I think the latest version of sony vegas has an output option for UMD video.

But you have to get it into the psp through the memory card.