[Dave Blodgett]

yes, progressive download is the way to go unless you have a very large customer base that will be watching the movie simoultaneously.

The bit rate you choose for compression is a function your content, the frame size you want the video to play in, and the quality you want it to display at. A ‘talking head’ with static background will require a significantly lower bit rate than say, auto racing, and a frame size of 640×360 will require a higher bit rate than a 320×240 frame to deliver the same perceived quality. As Dean mentioned, this is why you need to experiment to determine what works best for your content, and your expectations.

We encode all of our online content to H.264 – the ubiquity of flash players that support it combined with the quality (both defined frame size and full screen) make it a clear choice for us.

http://www.adrenalinevision.com

[Dave Blodgett]

I started having this problem w/fcp recently after installing a new printer on our octo-core. Haven’t noticed it in other apps but it’s probably there. I keep the usb mouse plugged into the keyboard and just unplug/replug the cable and it comes right back to life. Funny thing is we recently moved the printer from a quad-core and never had the problem there (but that machine is running panther, the octo is running leopard).

-d

[Dave Blodgett]

My bad – you didn’t miss it – I was convinced the problem I was seeing was at the other end of the line. After searching searching searching I had one of those AHA! moments…

The 1/1000 gives me almost perfect stop motion and the canon produces great frame grabs that we pull into PS & use extensively. Optical flow produces some really crisp slo-motion effects as well. The strobing never became an issue until we tried to create DVD’s.

[Dave Blodgett]

Adding interlacing via compressor clearly added interlace, but it was on top of the problem I’m seeing – I can distinctly see both the interlacing and the orginal issue.

I’ve burned more coaters than I care to count at this point and nothing seems to improve the situation, but many options make matters worse.

What I’ve concluded is I’m fighting whats probably understood by folks shooting action sequences – when shooting 30p, the subject has simply moved quite a distance between frames and we get what is more approriately called strobe or judder like scenario. We are very close to the moving subject – sometimes just a foot or less, but more typically 4 – 6 feet, from the subject thats traveling 20 – 50 mph. I set the shutter to 1/1000 so I can pull clean frame grabs of the subject, but the cost appears to be the strobing.

I think my options at this point are – 1) live with it; 2) shoot with a higher speed camera; 3) reduce the shutter speed to improve strobing, but give up on clean slo-motion sequences and frame grabs. 4) Shoot in 60i. (since 99% of what we shoot goes online this wasn’t our 1st choice)

If I’ve totally missed something here, or there are other alternatives I’d enjoy hearing them!

thx,
-d

[Dave Blodgett]

I’ll poke around in compressor and see if I can add interlacing, but I may not have been clear on the outset – I’m just creating a NTSC SD DVD – The source is canon 1080 30f.

I’m using compressor/cinemacraft to downconvert the media as part of the mpeg2 transcoding.

-d

[Dave Blodgett]

I believe the problem is there when played from the timeline – it’s a little hard to see it on the small letterboxed monitor.

And I think that would explain why all the changes downstream in CinemaCraft & compressor have no effect…

[Dave Blodgett]

thanks Chris – I agree!

I capture the video at 1080p30 with fields set to ‘none’ – this is how the clips show up in the browser.

In the Cinema Craft Options window Advanced settings/First Field I used:
– progressive;
– Source Top/Output Bottom;
– Source Top/Output Top;
– Source Bottom/Output Bottom;
– Source Bottom/Output Top;

Each of the results are either bad or terrible, so, moving up my workflow I tried adjusting the field order in the timeline prior to exporting the QT movie. I’ve used ‘none’ and ‘top’, then ran through all CC options above – again no changes other than varying degrees of bad.

There’s something else I’m missing…

[Dave Blodgett]

I don’t think there are any iLink controls on the canon…

However, because you have HDV material, you should be setting the fcp capture to something like 1080i50 (or whatever is appropriate for the video you shot) and the deck control to Firewire Basic.

Also, I’ve found FCP to be pretty finicky about the order in which things are done. What works for me is to connect the canon via firewire to the mac.ensure nothing else is connected to the mac via firewire, then turn the camcrder on and set the dial to vcr/play. *Then* start FCP. If FCP is already open when you connect the camcorder to the mac, the success rate of fcp recognizing it is about 10% in my experience.

hope that helps,
-d

[Dave Blodgett]

Excellent – It’s amazing how simple it is, yet finding the ‘magic key’ seems so hard!

-d

[Dave Blodgett]

you were almost there – just change the .mp4 extension to .flv and if you have the latest plug-in (v115) it’ll play just fine.

-dave