Jonathan Miller
Forum Replies Created
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One thing to keep in mind that I didn’t mention earlier.
The timcode of your DV/DVCAM master won’t transfer through the Teranex box. I think it takes about 4 frames of time to do the conversion, so every frame will be recorded onto the HD master slightly late.
This may not be an issue, but I just wanted you to be aware of it.
IF it is an issue, then you could capture to an NLE and lay it to tape with proper TC, or you could simply make a tape to tape (SDI) dub of the converted material and correct the TC on the record deck.
Good luck!
Jon
TreeLine Productions
Fort Collins, CO USACurrently producing these popular podcasts:
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Cool, I’m glad you’re not going to be pulling your hair out anylonger!
I read manuals (books and .pdf versions) like they’re going out of style.
My wife calls them, “Jon porn.”
I’ve never had to do what you needed, but I could remember reading about how to do it somewhere…
Glad I remembered, and it’s cool you were able to tweak it!
Jon
Good luck!
Jon
TreeLine Productions
Fort Collins, CO USACurrently producing these popular podcasts:
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[Trevor Ward] “BVD – Blueray Video Disk”
I like your ideas, just hate the format war. Check out this entry from Wikipedia for one of your names. Seems fitting…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BVD
Jon
Good luck!
Jon
TreeLine Productions
Fort Collins, CO USACurrently producing these popular podcasts:
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It looks like the best way to do this is to add the chapters using QuickTime.
So, I would say that you should export your movie using Compressor, but create a preset so that you’re encoding to a mono AAC audio file (mp4).
Then, you’ll want to make note of all of the timecode positions of your chapter markers and do this (I’m copying and pasting this from the QT Pro 7 help):
In a text editor or word processor, type your list of chapters and save the document as plain text.
Make each item very short (preferably one word but no more than two or three words) and separate each item with a carriage return.In QuickTime Player, choose File > Open File, select the text file, and click Open.
Choose File > Export. In the Export pop-up menu, choose “Text to Text.” In the Use pop-up menu, choose “Text with Descriptors.”
Click Options. In the Text Export Settings dialog, select “Show Text, Descriptors, and Time”; select “Show time relative to start of Movie”; and set fractions of seconds to 1/30 (the default is 1/1000).
Click OK, then click Save to create a text file with descriptors.
Open the exported list in your text editor or word processor, and open the target movie in QuickTime Player.
Choose Window > Show Movie Info.
In QuickTime Player, drag the playhead on the timeline to find the first point in the movie where you want to begin a new chapter.
Use the Right and Left Arrow keys to step forward or backward a frame at a time as needed. Note the current time in the Properties window.In the text file, find the first chapter title and change the timestamp just before that chapter title to the time you noted in the Properties window.
The timestamp might now read, for example, [00:01:30.15], meaning that selecting the first chapter title will jump the viewer 1 minute, 30 seconds, and 15 frames into the movie.Repeat steps 9 through 11 until you’ve identified all the places in the movie that correspond to the chapter divisions and you’ve entered the proper timestamps in the text file.
Change the last timestamp (the one after the last chapter title in the text file) to match the duration of the movie.
Save the text file and import it into QuickTime Player.
QuickTime creates a new movie with just a text track.Choose Edit > Select All, choose Edit > Copy, and close the movie.
Click in the main movie, choose Edit > Select All, then choose Edit > “Add to Movie.”
QuickTime adds the text track to the movie.Choose Window > Show Movie Properties.
In the Properties window, select the video or audio track you want to associate with the chapter track, and click Other Settings.
Choose the main video or audio track from the Chapters pop-up menu.
If you have a movie with alternate subtitle or sound tracks, you can create multiple chapter lists in different languages and set the appropriate subtitle or sound track as the owner of each chapter list. The chapter list will change to match the selected language.Select the text track, then select “Preload this track” (to make the chapter track load first).
Deselect the new text track so that it doesn’t display on top of the video.
The new track will still function as a chapter track.Save the movie as a self-contained movie.
You can now choose a chapter title from the pop-up menu to the right of the timeline.Wow, that was long, but it should work, and it should be a fairly compact file in terms of MB.
Good luck!
Jon
TreeLine Productions
Fort Collins, CO USACurrently producing these popular podcasts:
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If you still need to call your friends for help, you should look into using Skype (www.skype.com) to make the phone call.
It will make it MUCH less expensive.
We all have to call friends for help once and a while!
Good luck!
Jon
TreeLine Productions
Fort Collins, CO USACurrently producing these popular podcasts:
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Dennis, I know Danny really well and I’m not surprised that he discovered the gamma issue. He’s one of the most calibration-obsessed people I’ve ever met. Good thing, too.
I believe he was originally going to name his first child “Blue-Only” since “SMPTE” just sounded silly…
In the end, his wife won out and they went with “Chris.”
Jon
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Cool.
Do you mean export using a movie or ref. movie and then export to MPEG2 using QT?
I don’t think you can export to MPEG2 using QuickTime comversion in the export menu of FCP 5 any longer.Jon
Good luck!
Jon
TreeLine Productions
Fort Collins, CO USACurrently producing these popular podcasts:
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Danny, until someone else can post on this thread, I’m going to say that it’s an issue with Compressor.
Can you try to do a test by using another encoder? Perhaps you still have an old version of Cleaner laying around?
If not, then maybe you can try one of my new favorite encoding applications, ffmpegx? You can use it for free to see if it works, and then donate $15 to register it if you like it. I have to admit, I only use it to make iPod-compatible H.264 files, but I just love it. It can do so many things…
https://homepage.mac.com/major4/
You can tweak the settings as much as you like, and if you get it to work just right, then you can save a preset. Sure, it’s not as easy as just exporting your timeline to Compressor…you’ll have to make a QT reference movie, but this may just solve your problem.
I seem to remember reading recently that the issue you’re having is a known problem–especially since it does not affect uncompressed codecs. I hope you can get it to work, and if you need anything just hollar!
Good luck!
Jon
TreeLine Productions
Fort Collins, CO USACurrently producing these popular podcasts:
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I’ve never converted anything to 1280×1024, but I have converted DV (720×480 29.97fps) to 1080p HDCAM (1920×1080 23.98fps) and it looks pretty darn good for originating various PD-150 and PD 100A cameras.
There are many ways to do this with software and you can easily search these forums for those solutions.
However, I usually can’t tie up my computers for the huge processing time software solutions take.
So, several times now I’ve used a Teranex Video Computer to do the conversion. The results can be pretty amazing, and the conversion is real-time. The Teranex box can do several things at once with your footage. It can do the scaling to bring your video up to HD, it can reduce the noise and DV compression artifacts in your original master and it can perform the frame rate conversion. My favorite thing about this computer is it’s ability to add proper motion blur to the image and to automatically recognize scene changes. This is important to be able to keep the conversion from “burping” across cuts.
Two things to keep in mind, though, with any type of conversion. The resulting image will look slightly fuzzy since you are taking a low resolution image and making it larger. You can sharpen it up slightly, but that will just make it noisier. Secondly, the frame rate conversion will not look as good as something FILMED in 24fps. Some of it will look amazing and some of it will strobe. By filming in 29.97fps (or more precisely, 60i) you don’t have to worry about the speed of pans or zooms. Anything will a certain amount of motion will stutterbecause of the lower temporal resolution. If there’s any way you can project 60i or 30p that will eliminate most of this issue.
I live in Colorado and use a company called Hannaway and Associates gwha.com They are a wonderful company and have helped me out too many times to count. Typically, their Teranex conversions cost $1000/finished hour of converted footage. You only pay for what has actually been converted. That price includes use of a the DVCAM feeder deck and the HDCAM recording deck all connected via SDI.
My feeling on all of this is that if it really matters, bring in a professional. This will also create an improved master for creating your DVD, so the cost can be more easily justified.
I hope you can find a solution that you’re comfortable with!
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Good luck!
Jon
TreeLine Productions
Fort Collins, CO USACurrently producing these popular podcasts:
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If there’s no easier way, you should always be able to precomp and then apply the scribble to that precomp.
Good luck!
Jon
TreeLine Productions
Fort Collins, CO USACurrently producing these popular podcasts: