[Jeff Greenberg]

Since youtube and vimeo are both going to recompress AGAIN everything you do, you should really bump the h.264 file that you upload as a much larger file. I’d generally suggest 20mbs.

Best,

Jeff G

Certified Master Trainer | Adobe, Apple, Avid
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
My book (with Richard Harrington and Robbie Carman)- An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro
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[Jeff Greenberg]

Export from Final Cut Express as Quicktime. Skip iMovie and go directly to the youtube upload page. It’ll be a very large file, but you won’t get hit with further quality hits.

h.264 > Apple Intermediary Codec (FCE/iMovie compression) > iMovie (I don’t know what’s happening here) to youtube.

Yes, it’ll be a long upload – and test it with 30sec-1 min of footage first (just so you can see the difference)

Best,

Jeff G

Certified Master Trainer | Adobe, Apple, Avid
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
My book (with Richard Harrington and Robbie Carman)- An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro
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[Jeff Greenberg]

First thing – after the ingest transcode of log and transfer, you’re working with 1080 HD 30i footage.

>Will I get the best quality for a dvd by just dragging the MPEG-2 setting into the batch window, or do I pre-compress to ProRes 422 first, then to MPEG-2?

Well, it’s already ProRes 44 at the moment you’re in FCP. If you export a QuickTime from FCP based on your timeline settings, it’s not going to recompress your footage on export. You can go directly into MPEG-2 from there. Highest quality is something else. You need to “Send To” compressor and FCP will communicate directly with compressor, skipping your render files, and re-rendering directly in the final output.

>is Compressor better than MPEG Streamclip for this?
Yes, no and maybe. MPEG Streamclip will be generally faster, as it doesn’t communicate with FCP.

>When to use ProRes 422, ProRes 422 LT, or HQ and what is the difference?
It’s about data rate. ProRes 422 is approx 140. LT is approx 100 and HQ is approx 220. Your AVCHD footage…well, it depends on the camera, but usually we’re talking from 25-50 or so.

It’s the general consensus by the Pro Community that you’re not getting any real benefit from HQ. LT was designed to be smaller than SD uncompressed; ideal for existing infrastructures, like news, where millions of dollars had been invested for SD pipelining.

If original footage is interlaced, is it better to transcode to progressive, for dvds, or is that just for web?
Deinterlace everything for web.
Do the Send to and let Compressor talk with FCP and about it being deinterlaced. It’ll do that automatically.

The end result DVD is always going to be interlaced – and likely FCP/Compressor is going to analyze and down convert each field.

Best,

Jeff G

Certified Master Trainer | Adobe, Apple, Avid
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
My book (with Richard Harrington and Robbie Carman)- An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro
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Contact me through my Website

[Jeff Greenberg]

I think it’ll mean more than that. It’ll mean that we’ll have to see how well it performs on existing systems; and my guess is that at 4k, it’ll all come down to the video card.

Watch the TV industry push it and push it heavy! This will be the reason to buy a new TV, new display, etc.

Yet most productions (except the top 1%) are going to be 2k (HD) and below. Most places can’t even display a 4k image.

The question will always be: what will make it attractive for john/jane doe to buy the consumer product?

Best,

Jeff G

Certified Master Trainer | Adobe, Apple, Avid
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
My book (with Richard Harrington and Robbie Carman)- An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro
Lynda.com – Compressor Essentials 3.5 and 4
Contact me through my Website

[Jeff Greenberg]

Well, I have a workaround. Transcode everything to ProRes in Compressor from FCP – you’ll have a 60-70 gig file, but I bet that should work fine.

Just a quick idea that hit me – what if you exporting only a minute to see if that had a problem?

Best,

Jeff G

Certified Master Trainer | Adobe, Apple, Avid
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
My book (with Richard Harrington and Robbie Carman)- An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro
Lynda.com – Compressor Essentials 3.5 and 4
Contact me through my Website

[Jeff Greenberg]

I’m totally wrong. I thought you were running into the preserve source aspect ratio setting in compressor (which you could save as a preset and reuse.)

I’ll take it that you’re downconverting from some HD footage – which probably scales better to 720×480 (than 720×486.) Me, I’d likely have it downscale and preserve the source aspect ratio (in compressor) meaning that I’d do widescreen SD with 6 lines of padding – or at least throw that switch and let compressor work it out.

I do want to check this – you’re doing a downconversion in compressor to 720×486, but it only shows up in QT as 640×480 (It’s likely that it’s truly 720×480, just displaying square pixels). Compressor may be preserving the source aspect ratio by default.

I’d test this myself, but I’m crunching for a conference for next week….

[Jeff Greenberg]

Duplicate a preset you like and save it with this unchecked.

Best,

Jeff G

Certified Master Trainer | Adobe, Apple, Avid
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
My book (with Richard Harrington and Robbie Carman)- An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro
Lynda.com – Compressor Essentials 3.5 and 4
Contact me through my Website

[Jeff Greenberg]

Probably can’t be done with compressor – you should look at episode for this. Compressor limits quite a bit, what the outputs can be for a number of formats including mpeg2

Best,

Jeff G

Certified Master Trainer | Adobe, Apple, Avid
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
My book (with Richard Harrington and Robbie Carman)- An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro
Lynda.com – Compressor Essentials 3.5 and 4
Contact me through my Website

[Jeff Greenberg]

h.264. Full quality of the HD, 7-10mbs/ minimum (if you want to retain most of the quality.) But definitely h.264.

Best,

Jeff G

Certified Master Trainer | Adobe, Apple, Avid
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
My book (with Richard Harrington and Robbie Carman)- An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro
Lynda.com – Compressor Essentials 3.5 and 4
Contact me through my Website

[Jeff Greenberg]

You could try moving the settings.

Compresor 4 stores them in:
~/Library/Application Support/Compressor/Settings

Compressor 3.x stores them in:
~/Library/Application Support/Compressor/

No idea if it’ll work. Report back.

Best,

Jeff G

Certified Master Trainer | Adobe, Apple, Avid
————
You should follow me (filmgeek) on twitter. I promise to be nice.
My book (with Richard Harrington and Robbie Carman)- An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro
Lynda.com – Compressor Essentials 3.5 and 4
Contact me through my Website