[Lee Burrows]

Hey Jeremy. I apologize for the silly question but in the interest of learning more about FCP I will pose it. What is Xsan? I see this mentioned alot and don’t undrestand what it is. I have also heard about the QT 7.1.3 issues involving it so I wanted to see what it is. I googled it and see that it stands for storage. I have an Xserv raid set up at home with a terabyte of storage but that would not mean that Xsan is another word for Xserv…is it?

Does QT 7.1.3 mess with Xserv that you have heard of?

Thanks for any help with this.

Lee

G5 Mac OS X
Dual 2.0 GHz
FCP 4.5 HD
XServe Raid 1 Terabyte

G5 Mac OS X
Dual 2.3 GHz
FCP 5.02 Studio
G-Tech G Raid 500 GBs
2 – Lacie Drives 200 GBs

[Lee Burrows]

[Borjis] “Though 6 is pretty good and much better than 15.”

It maybe theoretically but visually there is very little if any noticable difference with the artifacting at 6 compared to 15. And if you think that there is then I’d love to see some of your compressions if you don’t mind.

Lee

G5 Mac OS X
Dual 2.0 GHz
FCP 4.5 HD
XServe Raid 1 Terabyte

G5 Mac OS X
Dual 2.3 GHz
FCP 5.02 Studio
G-Tech G Raid 500 GBs
2 – Lacie Drives 200 GBs

[Lee Burrows]

Interesting! Thanks Borijis. Compressor actually allows me to play with the GOP structure from like IBBP to IP and from 15 to 6 on the closed GOP. However I have not heard of Quantinzation.

I will check out those programs. I run a MAC system but will check it out. I would love to get one of your high level settings if you don’t mind so I can test it out once I get the program. You can just give me the few settings you tweak and I will the other presets alone if you are alright with that.

Lee

G5 Mac OS X
Dual 2.0 GHz
FCP 4.5 HD
XServe Raid 1 Terabyte

G5 Mac OS X
Dual 2.3 GHz
FCP 5.02 Studio
G-Tech G Raid 500 GBs
2 – Lacie Drives 200 GBs

[Lee Burrows]

I’d love to believe you you, Borjis but until I see proof or somebody gives me settings that I can then apply to see the difference then I have not compressed anything even close to a movie you would rent from Blockbuster.

I encoded with compressor, cleaner and bit vice with no luck of a clean compression. Still plpenty of artifacting after compression.

Lee

G5 Mac OS X
Dual 2.0 GHz
FCP 4.5 HD
XServe Raid 1 Terabyte

G5 Mac OS X
Dual 2.3 GHz
FCP 5.02 Studio
G-Tech G Raid 500 GBs
2 – Lacie Drives 200 GBs

[Lee Burrows]

Sounds like it might be a field dominace issue with the old footage. You might try switching the field dominance on your compression and see if that helps. If it was lower then try upper or vice versa.

I have had trouble with pans and movement as well on compressing with these compression programs. I use compressor. The bottom line appears to be that if yo want to get true movie DVD quality then you have to hardware compressors/encoders at a nice chunk of money or live with the fact knowing that the compression programs for the most part are not going to cut it.

Good Luck

G5 Mac OS X
Dual 2.0 GHz
FCP 4.5 HD
XServe Raid 1 Terabyte

G5 Mac OS X
Dual 2.3 GHz
FCP 5.02 Studio
G-Tech G Raid 500 GBs
2 – Lacie Drives 200 GBs

[Lee Burrows]

I’m an producer/editor that has in the last 2 years thanks in large part to people like yourself and the great people of the cow have learned a lot of the technical issues that involve FCP and the issues surrounding it.

It has always been my understanding that you need a reference signal to sync up audio and video. I assume it could be anything but black is the most popular??

We have had an issue for the past 2 years where my audio is 2 frames behind the video on output to beta and we run a third monitor for viewing that references the black for sync. It has been flickering a lot lately and I assume it will clear up with the new black burst as it does when I unplug our current one. The only trouble is the 3rd monitor rolls when our current BB generator is unplugged.

Thanks

G5 Mac OS X
Dual 2.0 GHz
FCP 4.5 HD
XServe Raid 1 Terabyte

G5 Mac OS X
Dual 2.3 GHz
FCP 5.02 Studio
G-Tech G Raid 500 GBs
2 – Lacie Drives 200 GBs

[Lee Burrows]

Thanks guys. I really appreciate it!!!

G5 Mac OS X
Dual 2.0 GHz
FCP 4.5 HD
XServe Raid 1 Terabyte

G5 Mac OS X
Dual 2.3 GHz
FCP 5.02 Studio
G-Tech G Raid 500 GBs
2 – Lacie Drives 200 GBs

[Lee Burrows]

Perfect. Thanks so much, Matte. It was so quick too.

[Lee Burrows]

No rush Jeremy. I appreciate your input. All the settings on the cropping that you mentioned are the ones that I use. I will double check my field order but I’m pretty sure it is good too.

I like the thought of bring it out first as a reference file as this is something that I have not tried and will give this a go! That could help. Thanks!!

Lee

G5 Mac OS X
Dual 2.0 GHz
FCP 4.5 HD
XServe Raid 1 Terabyte

G5 Mac OS X
Dual 2.3 GHz
FCP 5.02 Studio
G-Tech G Raid 500 GBs
2 – Lacie Drives 200 GBs

[Lee Burrows]

Hello. First off DV/HDV material is going to more grainy as this is a more compressed codec than say photo-jpeg taking in via an AJA-IO or Blackmagic video capture card. The jittery motion might be caused from compression in the wrong field order so you might try another field order under your field dominance settings. I believe DV is upper field dominance instead of lower.

My advice to you for the best DVD you are going to get is to export your project using quicktime conversion into the same codec as your sequence so if it is a DV or HDV sequence that you are working in then export it to that using QT conversion. If you are working with HDV footage then you might try the H264 codec when you do your QT conversion as I have had ppretty good results exporting my HDV sequences in the past to the H264 codec. Set everything to best. Then open your compression program( I assume compressor) and import your QT conversion file. Set all the settings to best/highest quality in your comprpession program and compress. A couple of setting that will help is to set your GOP to IP instead of IBBP and use a Constant Bit Rate of 7 roughly. You might search all the forums to see what the best CBR bit rate would be for the DV codec. This will give you the best possible mpeg2 for your DVD. Import the mpeg 2 into your DVD program and burn.

Good Luck

Lee

G5 Mac OS X
Dual 2.0 GHz
FCP 4.5 HD
XServe Raid 1 Terabyte

G5 Mac OS X
Dual 2.3 GHz
FCP 5.02 Studio
G-Tech G Raid 500 GBs
2 – Lacie Drives 200 GBs