[Ed Dooley]

“exercising the right” “freedom to vote”. It’s true where I live in Vermont and elsewhere, but sadly, it’s not true all over the U.S.
What I like about this little OT thread is that nobody is name calling or pushing one political philosophy over another.
Ed (who already voted)

[walter biscardi] “…………please take time to exercise your right to Vote in today’s national elections. ……..but our freedom to vote is one thing that should never be taken for granted or ignored.”

[Ed Dooley]

First step, go to the Compression Techniques and Web Streaming forums.
Ed

[Ed Dooley]

There’s a cropping option in the Inspector, in the Geometry window. It’s in the manual,
did you look there first?
Ed

[Ed Dooley]

The best thing to do, but with a longer export time, is to Export to Compressor. All transitions are
rendered directly to the encoder for the best quality. It ties up your system longer though.
Ed

[Ed Dooley]

This could help with bit-rate settings:
https://dvd-hq.info/Calculator.html

This discussion has specifics about settings for footage with motion, to help reduce artifacts (it’s for U-Lead,
but there is helpful information about GOPs):
https://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?t=10880&sid=f0294fddc59740ba742a7c96fb1043ec

Ed

[Ed Dooley]

I guess I would ask why you want to use VBR. How long are your videos? If they’re short enough to
fit on a DVD without VBR, why not use a relatively high, but still within specs, CBR? There have been discussions
about VBR producing better encodes, but I think that encoders these days, in general, if your video is short enough to fit on a DVD
without needing to go to VBR, a CBR encode will look great. Hollywood goes VBR for 2 hour movie encodes,
but is your skateboard video 2 hours?
Ed

[markambition] “Does anybody know if the problem with the Two-pass VBR compression in Compressor has been fixed?

I read that 2.3 fixed the blocky 2-pass compression, but my experience tells me otherwise.

I am editing skateboard videos (high motion) and I am stuck using 1 pass VBR because the 2-pass looks worse. I am out of ideas on how to make my video look better for action sports.

Also, what is the advantage of using a smaller GOP structure, I hear that’s better but I seem to get worse video using IP with 6 or 15 than with IBBP with 15…

Any suggestions??”

[Ed Dooley]

Your 6 minute long video is playing back at almost T1 speed, so, yes, people are going to have to wait awhile if they have a slow DSL
connection. I’m really surprised that you’re saying a small size of 320×180 at such a high data rate doesn’t look great. It should look very
good with that size at that rate. Are you scaling it to size in AE first, then compressing it in Compressor? AE does a great job scaling, but
you might try exporting it at full size and scaling it as you compress it. Compressor 2’s scaling is pretty good. I would actually suggest
*lowering* the data rate. You might want to provide 2 versions, a high bandwidth (1Mbs) and a lower version (500kbs). Only folks with the fastest connections will get a streaming experience with the size files you have now. The H.264 codec creates smaller file sizes at the same data rate as older QT codecs, so it’s not making file sizes too big (as you think). I think 6 minutes might be too long for a reel, so you might think about shortening that long one.
HTH,
Ed

[george dv] “Hello,
I’m building my editing website, and am trying to display a couple of videos as embedded clips on the page. It’s entertainment-based work, so I am using Quicktime as my primary format. I’m working on a MAC G5 with FCP 5.1.2, Compressor, Quicktime Pro, and After Effects 6.5. I have two clips that I’d like to put on my site. The first one is just over 2 minutes, and is flashy and graphics-heavy. I imagine it will require a better quality in order to really be seen well. The second one is about 6 minutes, and is more of a storytelling reel. It should look decent, but I don’t think it needs to be as pristine as the first reel. I have been trying various settings from After Effects (its all 16×9, so I am using a 320×180 export frame size, and cropped it in After Effects via comp size).

Here are the big questions: Is 6 minutes just too long to look ok and not take forever to download? I don’t want people to sit there and wait for 15 minutes just to see my 6 minute clip. I imagine they’ll give up after 3-4 minutes of waiting. The current version I have of this clip is 60MB or so, and it looks ok, but not great. I really like how the H264 codec looks, but am concerned that it just makes the files too big. Is there a particular setting (or group of settings) to be aware of for progressive download? One of my pet peeves is watching a progressive download where the playback keeps catching up to the download, and keeps stopping. Would love to avoid that.

I REALLY appreciate any help. I’ve been through some of the postings here, and am still looking for some additional info.”

[Ed Dooley]

I can help. Do a search of posts! There are over 100 posts about this exact problem. Search the FCP, Compressor, and Apple DVDSP forums.
Ed

[rohan khokar] “i am using APPLE compressor for the first time…
i have a .MOV file….now i load this in the batch window first and set the preset as MPEG 1….when i click on the submit button, i get an error : UNABLE TO CONNECT TO BACKGROUND PROCESS.
can someone plz help me out on this !!!”

[Ed Dooley]

David’s suggestion should fix your problem, but if you happen to de-interlace, Compressor 2
now does very good de-interlacing without losing the resolution that de-interlacing in FCP would
cause.
Ed

[Ed Dooley]

Not to disagree with Walter, the Nattress plug-ins are great, but there is another option. Compressor 2 also has the ability to do a standards conversion and I haven’t heard anything yet to suggest it’s a bad or sub-standard option. From what I’ve read, they’ve greatly improved the conversion ability in v2. I’ve used both and they both seem to do a good job. Maybe Graeme Nattress could suggest ways that his converter is still a better way to go.
Ed

[walter biscardi] “Go to http://www.nattress.com and look at his Standards Converter. Ony $100 and you can download and try it first. That’s the most recommended plug-in for this type of work on the Cow.”