[Craig Seeman]

[Wayne Williams] “Exported to Compressor”

Have you tried saving as a Quicktime Self Contained and opened that in Compressor rather than Export to Compressor?
I’ve heard others bumping into odd things with Export to Compressor on certain sequences. I wonder if it’s something about one of the stills you’re using. Doing Quicktime Self Contained (I know, more disc space and more time) might beat the problem though.

[Craig Seeman]

In the Profile tab – Field Order: Top First.
Alsmo make sure you have Frame Type set to Interlaced.

My settings which they may be distributing as a preset since I sent it to DGFastchannel.
Code type Bitrate-Based
Bitrate control CBR
Average rate 25000kbit/s
Pixel aspect ratio 1:1
Frame Type Interlaced
Field Order Top First
GOP type Closed Gop
GOP format IBBPBB
Encoder Settings 2-Pass

I did first use these settings with Episode 4.1.2 when I passed their certification.
I haven’t retested with Episode 4.2.2

You should ask them what they’re seeing. They may not give you a technical description but I may be able to translate colloquial English to “Techenese”

Make sure they’re ok with Luma and Chroma peaks as well as Black level (set-up) and audio peaks. These are other non Episode reasons for DGFastchannel rejection.

Make sure you send them very clean material for the tests. Avoid slow mos, black and white video fx and other color fx.

[Craig Seeman]

There’s been much talk about color but I’d thought I’d mention about the other issue you noted regarding “pixels.” Have you tried using compression markers in front of those “tough” areas? Creating a near by key frame might (might not) help.

[Craig Seeman]

Studio is 1 pass presets only.
Studio Pro is 1 pass encodes with full user control
Studio Pro HD includes 2 pass encoding and full HD frame sizes (WMV HD).

It’s always possible you bought it and it became disabled. The demos come with the free Flip4Mac player.
Go to your System Prefs and click on Flip4Mac WMV. Go to “Upgrade” and see what it says at top in black and next to Name and Serial Number.

[Craig Seeman]

My experience is that Quicktime will show the artifacts you mention but they will actually be fine. Follow their recommended GOP structure. The settings you’re using look similar to mine. Send them the file and have them look at it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the settings they’ve sent to you is the one I sent to them.

[Craig Seeman]

Curt,

Any word on why DGFastchannel says your failing certification?

Some important details are that they want Field Order – Top First (even for standard def).
Pixel aspect ratio should be 1:1 to keep the .9 pixel size rather than make square.
GOP format should be IBBPBB
I do 2 Pass CBR encode at 25000kbps for max quality (which is their peak spec) but will accept as low as 10000kbps. If you do VBR encode your peaks may be too high.
In your NLE you should conservatively hold the luma to 100ire or equivalent. I don’t remember the chorma spec but it also is very conservative. Think PBS standards. If you’ve ever done broadcast work for PBS you’ll know what that means (very conservative).
Also think analog audio instead of digital. It seems that if you let peaks go above 0 on your digital scale they’ll reject it. Normally when I do spot work I push to as close to +6 digital can compress/limit to keep things hot. That’s not acceptible to DGFastchannel.

[Craig Seeman]

Hi Curt,
I passed DG Fastchannel certification using Episode 4.1.x and have succesfully distriputed broadcast spots through them. Episode is now up to 4.2.2 and some setting options have changed slightly but if you give me a bit I can post back some details to help you.

Can you post details such as version of Episode and any information DG Fastchannel gave you for the failures.

I do have a preset I used under Episode 4.1.x that passed their certification.

[Craig Seeman]

True.
I was thinking in terms of downconverting to DV during capture to avoid working with long GOP (long renders) when delivering SD but an alternative would be to work in HDV and export the edited HDV to tape. Each workflow has a significant “time bite” gotcha though.

[Craig Seeman]

[zrb123] “(the movies you buy on itunes are only a little over one gig)”

Thought I’d note that while they’re H.264 those movies on iTunes are not HD frame sizes.

[Craig Seeman]

[zrb123] “Like a said before if you can get an entire 2 hour SD move in 1-1.5 gig I can get a clients HD content onto a single Blank DVD (most videos for clients will not be nearly as long as 2 hrs)”

Major UGH!. 2 hour SD is usually about 4 gig with MPEG2 encoding at a “passable” data rate. At the size you suggest it’s practically a VCD. If you’re talking DATA DVD 2 hours is about 16GB with DV or HDV codec.

I’ve heard that you can get 50 minutes of HD material on a standard DVD using H.264 (much better than MPEG2) and author in DVD Studio Pro and yes that might be enough (or one can break it into a 2DVD set) so it might be viable if the client can play back such a DVD. It won’t work in a standard DVD player but might from a computer (a Mac at least if they have one – not sure if a Windows PC would handle this). So I’ll admit that might work for some clients.