[Craig Seeman]

[RoRK] “The WMVAdvanced that you are alluding to with Flip4Mac is WMV9 and not VC-1 right? “

It’s WMV9 (advanced), not VC-1. I don’t doubt VC-1 support will happen. I suspect it’s a mater of when regarding Flip4Mac.

I believe Microsoft announced a Beta of the next WME which will include VC-1 support. I’m going to grab and play with it as soon as I can.

When using WME you can examine the presets to see what they’re using, as well as roll your own. Sometimes using Properties will let you know what’s on the inside. On the Mac often using WMP9 File/Get Info or Quicktime(withFlip4Mac) Window/ShowMovieInfo, will show you what’s on the inside even if it can’t play the file.

[Craig Seeman]

Firewire/USB hard drive is fast. Gigibit Ethernet is fast too. I’ve seen routers well under $100 that support that. In those cases I simply set up the computers on the network. You can use ftp but you can set it up for simple drag and drop. If you want to do this over the internet both parties need very fast connections. If you’re dealing with hours of video you’d likely have to pay major dollars for a “business” connection. I’ve done a couple of gigs on mine without problem on my very fast consumer connection (15mbits down/2mbits up per second)

[Craig Seeman]

VC-1 is in many ways Microsoft’s “answer” to H.264. How widely useful VC-1 will be depends on player distribution. Will there be a simple codec update to WMP10 and how many Windows users will update and how fast? I’ bump into corporate clients who are still reluctant to use WMV9 because they’re still using WMP7 (even though there’s a codec update which allows WMP7.1 to play WMV9 files).

BTW, Flip4Mac can encode WMV9Advanced. It can’t play it back yet but that, I suspect, will change at some point.

[Craig Seeman]

[tam] “rendered a lossless Quicktime”

Missing lots of info here. What was your source video? You’re not going to make DVCAM source look HD. You might consider output to 8 bit Uncompressed and/or working in that space from the getgo if possible. I’d also recommend using Compressor (or higher end encoder) and using DVD Studio Pro. With Compressor you’ll be able to control the data rate. Maybe 2 Pass VBR 6.5 Mbps avg and 7.5 peak or CBR at about 7 Mbps.

[Craig Seeman]

Maybe post a step by step for what you did that worked. I think others have bumped into similar issues with Avid export for compression so a step by step might be a great help.

BTW, If you encode audio AC3 (192kbps for example) instead of PCM you’ll get a good but much smaller audio file, which can give you more room to push up the data rate for the video MPEG2 file.

[Craig Seeman]

The Cinema version is indeed H.264 but
frame size is 640×272
File size is 48.18 MB
Data Rate is 1079.42 kbps
frame rate is 25fps (PAL)

Could it have been shot with Varicam or CineAlta or maybe even film (but then why not keep it at 24fps instead of 25fps PAL?)? There’s certainly a lot of good color grading evident. Keep in mind a good compressionist may use processing filters for best viewing on a computer monitor. Also keep in mind high quality source has significant impact on end result quality. HDCAM SR source is going to look much better than DVCAM source given the same compression settings.

[Craig Seeman]

Although I’m a Mac person I’ve heard of similar issues on Avid/Mac side and Squeeze. Have you tried saving as a self contained movie (not reference)?

Is it possible you can save in a non Avid proprietary codec? On the Mac side, saving to Apple’s DV mov rather than Avid’s, has solved issues similar to this.

[Craig Seeman]

I saved the movie to desktop. It wasn’t protected.
It’s 640×360
H.264 Video
AAC audio
23.98fps (NTSC video 24FPS)
Data Rate is 1267.91 kbps

Played smoothly for me as far as I can tell. I really don’t like 24fps. I can see that motion issue. Not dropped or stutter frames though. There’s also several shots which might be 60fps (or similar) slowed to 24fps. Some of those showed the kind of motion that bothers me (not smooth motion . . . maybe as if it needed frame blending).

That’s a fairly high data rate and H.264 takes more computer power to decode than other codecs. That combined with the data may certainly create some issues on some computers.

[Craig Seeman]

What do you mean by “pixel depth?”
You can certainly export as 10 bit uncompressed MOV file (for 8 bit uncompressed) but wouldn’t you be doing that in FCP or equivalent?

[Craig Seeman]

Depending what codec you’re using, Compressor 2 gives you an estimated size in the Inspectory Summary tab. You can make setting adjustments to hit your target size.