[Ed Dooley]

1- I find it best to stay with the highest quality up to compression. Rich’s suggestion of DVC50 is better than going to the much lower quality DV, but why are you going to a lower quality codec first at all? Why not bring in the beta footage with the IO as Uncompressed 8bit, then let Compressor do the scaling. Compressor can also do the cropping that Rich suggested (another good suggestion).
2-Some people prefer doing it self-contained, some as a reference file (not self-contained). If I have time I do the self-contained files, if in a hurry I export the much faster reference file.
3-Yes, Compressor can do those specs. Duplicate an MPEG4 setting and change the video and audio settings to suit your specs. One spec your client didn’t give you is the data-rate,
an important missing piece of information.
Ed

[MUKI PICTURES] “Please forgive my lack of knowledge !

My Japanese client would like me to send 1-2 minute
Video Clips for Cell Phone downloads
with the following specs:

Video:320×240?QVGA), 24Bit MPEG4
Audio:MPEG4-AAC 44.10kHz 16Bit 2ch

The Original Footage is Beta SP
that I will convert (via AJA I/O).

1. Would I capture as Betacam 8bit to DV 48kHz ?

2. Would I export as a Quicktime Self Contained Movie
and then import into Compressor ?

3. Can Compressor then be set to these particular specs
as listed above ?

Thank you for your help and knowledge.”

[Ed Dooley]

Sorry about the spelling Marco, it’s Solorio to the rest of us. 🙂
Ed

[Ed Dooley]

Marco Solario’s site has a lot of info.
https://codecs.onerivermedia.com/
Ed

[Ed Dooley]

The ioHD will do it all, but at over 3 times the price of the MXO.
Ed

[Bill Doyle] “I wasn’t able to attend NAB, but I’m trying to figure out where everything stands for the MBP user. I have a MBP and a Matrox MXO for output, but would like a way to edit in something other than HDV. It seems that all of the capture methods require a desktop/card setup.

Will the new AJA ioHD do what I want or do I still need a way to capture HD-SDI into the laptop? Short of doing a software transcode from HDV to something else, what are my options?”

[Ed Dooley]

I mostly do it in case there’s a field order problem (meaning, if I screwed up).
If I deinterlace in FCP, then bring it into PS or AE, I don’t know there’s a problem
until I open it. If I do it after capture, I can see the result immediately, when it’s already
a still image, so fixing it is quick. I think you’re right about de-interlacing stills though.
I don’t think there’s a huge quality difference from program to program. For video, I still
like the quality of AE, although I’m using Compressor’s Frame Controls with good success.
Ed

[rafalaos] “Ed,
This why I do it in FC with BorisCC, RE_Vision or Nattress. The de-interlacer of Photoshop is too basic. In AE you can get it well done with the same plugins. There is an article in the COW comparing the different methods. Although to make still mai not be necesary to use the most precise one.
Cheer,
Rafel
“

[Ed Dooley]

I usually do the de-interlacing afterwards in PS or AE, although I haven’t compared for quality.
Ed

[rafalaos] “And don’t forget to drop a de-interlacing filter before to make the Freeze Frame.”

[Ed Dooley]

What they said! To expand on Jeff’s comments though, QT *is* on more PCs than ever,
but we run into problems with corporate clients when their IT departments don’t allow
people to install anything on their PCs. So, for most uses, we provide a WMV9 and a QT.
For the reason mentioned by Jeff, we don’t normally do h.264 (but it does look very good)
because not everyone has QT7 yet. We do an MP4 QT.
We also used to go no higher than 300kbs to accommodate slower DSL (384kbs) connections, but now we do 500kbs as the slowest bandwidth version. Depending on the use, we do 320×240, 384×288, or 480×360, sometimes at 15fps, sometimes at 29.97.
For audio, it depends on what it is, dialogue-only we do mono at 40kbs, music or higher end narration we do stereo at 64kbs or higher. AAC is a good way to go these days (or WM9 audio for WMVs).
HTH,
Ed

[Ed Dooley]

Compressor *does* help. There have been lots of threads on how best to use Compressor to de-interlace. The first thing to know is that you don’t use the de-interlace filter. It throws away half your resolution.
Duplicate one of the h.264 Presets, go to Frame Controls and change it to Custom,
select Progressive for the output, and select Best for the other settings. DON’T use the de-interlace filter in Filters, it’s a “let’s just throw away half the fields” filter.
Ed

[Ed Dooley]

And the FCP manual has information on creating images in square pixel programs like Photoshop.
Ed

[Ed Dooley]

You can go into Compressor under Apple settings, web download, quicktime 7 download,
H.264, duplicate setting, and set an HD format and data rate. Or you can choose one of the
DVD settings, compress a separate audio and video file, then mux them with MPEG Streamclip (free)
https://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-win.html Windows
https://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-mac.html Mac

Ed