[Lee Burrows]

Jeremy Thanks for your advice. I have done everything you have said in the past(Constant Bit Rate, IP instead of IBBP, etc…) and will try it again. However it does not get rid of artifacting. And on movement and slow transitions it is very noticeable.

I am curious when you say TV…are you viewing your results on an old school tv monitor or on a newer LCD or plasma monitor that gives you cleaner crisper picture? In my experience, older monitors hide comppression shortcomings(artifacting, dirty dissolves, etc…) while the newer ones point out any mistakes quickly. Also software encodes seem to play back better on computers than out of DVD players.

We have never had a client complain either and probably won’t as they don’t really look at it the same way as us. They are so focused on the content that the quality is one of the last things on their mind unless it is glaringly awful.

When you have a moment why don’t you send me a sucessful compression workflow using compressor, bit vice or cleaner for a project of lets say a minute. Our compressions vary in length but primarily are under 10 minutes on most of our projects.

An example from an FCP Blackmagic NTSC-Jpeg sequence that I am looking for utilizing compressor 2 would be:

Final Cut>Export>Using Compressor 2
Select 90 min 4:3 best quality (This is what I normally choose to begin with but am willing to try any other settngs under the compressor umbrella)
Then let me know your tweaks/customazations. In the past I have adjusted the GOP from IBBP to IP at a GOP of 15. I could move this to 6 if it would help but I have tried that to without any luck.
I have also tried the a CBR setting of like 7.0 instead of the VBR settings. But I am always looking for anything better so let me know your setting here to if you don’t mind. Those are the main 2 areas that I have played with so please let me know if there are other areas that you are adjusting to help such as the field dominance.

Believe me I would love to see something look good from the software side of things as I enjoy compressing the footage in house instead of sending it out for hardware compression. But it is so frustrating to continue to get less than desirable results. It also gives me less confidence when after countless posts and searches on this forum and others that the so-called compression experts never seem to chime in at all or with anything out of the ordinary that I could be doing wrong. That leaves me having to assume that the guys/gals that know and understand the science of compressing/encoding the best know that these are the best results that you are going to achieve using software encoding.

Thanks for your time in advance.

Lee

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

G5 Mac OS X
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FCP 5.02 Studio
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[Lee Burrows]

Good Luck Tim. I have been trying to solve this equation for quite some time and what I have come to find is that for any type of quality compression that the best way to go is to spend a nice amount of money and buy a real time encoder like the guys in hollywood use.

Bit Vice is a little better than compressor on quick movement when you have various codecs compressing under one umbrella while compressor seems to be a bit better when working in one uniformed codec and not mixing different codecs(graphics, video, etc…). BUT I have yet to find a software program that gives a quality compression if you are coming out of one of final cut pros codecs. I primarily work in the Blackmagic NTSC-Jpeg or Photo-Jpeg 720X486 codec and ocassionally in the NTSC DV Codec. I have put this question out before and am still waiting on a good answer to a workflow that provides you with a quality mpeg2 out of one of these programs working in the 720X486 Photo-Jpeg or 720X480 DV codec. If it does exist then it will give me belief in the software programs again but until that day I say the best method for a quality DVD is using a real time encoder. We ship out some of our bigger jobs to get it encoded this way to maintan the quality of the product because of the porr quality software encodes.

Now I haven’t checked sorenson squeeze so if you like it then I’d be interested in hearing about it.

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
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[Lee Burrows]

Hey tim. I’m glad that worked for you. I don’t know all of the technical jargon that goes along with how it works. However what I believe happens is imagine your FCP timeline is a pile of trash that is all paper with one or two pieces of leftover food(this might not be the best image but bear with me:) spread across the floor. It is all in order to be collected but in order to be collected it needs to be bagged. Bagging it or making a self contained movie puts everything into its proper alignment so that it can now be taken to get dumped properly or compressed via compressor. Oh well…I tried:)

In technical terms I believe it has to do with the GOP(Group of Pictures) structure and when you introduce something out of the ordinary into your FCP timeline GOP structure it confuses compressor so when you export it as a reference file or self contained movie then it redoes the GOP structure to group everything together thus eliminating the confusion for compressor.

I had an HDV FCP timeline that I was trying to master back to my HDV deck. It wouldn’t get 30 seconds into the timeline before dropping a frame. I was frustrated about this for days as I captured it fine from the deck but it wouldn’t export back to the deck without freezing up/dropping a frame. Finally after talking to the people at Sony they told me to export my timeline via quicktime conversion with the HDV codec, then import that file and then play it out of an FCP timeline. WAALAA…it worked like a charm. The same thing was happening to me that was to you. The GOP structure to export to tape was breaking up with all the files as separate parts but when I did the conversion which regrouped everything together it played like a charm to tape.

To answer your final question is no you shouldn’t need to do anything else differently depending on how you are mastering your final output.

Were you that impressed with the final mpeg2? Do you think that it looked better after making the self contained movie then before when you went straight through compressor? It shouldn’t improve the quality but never say never.

That’s my two cents.

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

[Lee Burrows]

I agree with Don. You might also try make self-contained FCP reference file and then bring that into compressor. This will pull all the information together so that it hopefully helps alleviate this problem.

I know that when I add Boris transitions to a project in FCP and then run it straight through compressor without making a self-contained FCP reference file then I get freeze frames where my Boris transition was supposed to be but if I make the self-contained FCP reference file then the transition works perfectly. I got the advice fro the pros on this great website. To make a reference file then go to export and shoose quicktime movie then uncheck the box labeled make self contained movie or you can make a self contained movie. It really doesn’t matter. It is just a space issue. A reference file is a lot smaller.

Hope this helps

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]

Yeah Photo-Jpeg is a great codec! It is 2 to 1 which give you great storage space and a high quality look. You will hear a lot of people rave about how Digital video is better than analog beta which is technically true. However for the eye, Photo-Jpeg captured in from analog beta has much less artifacting and compression than Digital DV video captured in the DV/DVCPro NTSC codec.

I wonder is it possible to capture DV video via firewire and in the capture settings have the quicktime compression setting be photo-jpeg instead of DV/DVCPro NTSC? Then DV might surpass analog beta.

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 appreciate the help.

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]

Hey. There isn’t anything I would recommend different other than maybe letting compressor resize the frame size for you to 720X480 instead of during the QT Conversion. If you are working with graphics in the animation codec mixed in with your HDV then I think that this way will work best. Thats what I feel this method helped the most along with holding up the quality of the HDV. Give it a try and let me know how it turns out. Good Luck.

Also do you have any suggestions for me in getting Blackmagic NTSC Photo-jpeg and dv codecs out to SD DVD maintainingtheir quality? Any suggestions are appreciated.

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]

Charles,

Sorry I’m just getting back to you. Holidays and all! Yes the route I took was from HDV to H.264 via quicktime conversion adjusting all the settings to the best and then finally to mpeg2 through comprpessor 2 with my GOP setting to IP.

I did straight from FCP HDV sequences through compressor and got crap results especially involving the graphics. This process was by far the best. I’d be happy to show you but it may be a few weeks as I’m in the midst of a project and there isn’t much daylight at the end of the tunnel just yet. Check it out for yourself and compare and you should see for yourself. I outlined what type of graphics that mixed in with my HDV footage in the original post of this blog. Please let me know what you discover. I’m interested in feedback.

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

[Lee Burrows]

Hi all! I solved part of my problem and did something I yet to seen posted or shared. So her is what I did to go from HDV sequence to SD DVD and it held up pretty well.

I exported my HDV sequence via QT conversion in the H.264 codec. Yes I know its for true HD but its handles the HDV the best. I even let it resize my sequence instead of doing it in compressor to 720X480 however looking back it might be a little better letting compressor resize it. I did many tests and this came out the best from an HDV sequence. I tried everything from HDV to animation codecs, to bringing it out of my FCP edited sequence back to my Sony HDV deck and back in with a down conversion to DV 720X480 and all had similiar results of either bad artifacting or strobing or field issues in the graphics. This codec did it. Try and see for yourself but if you are working in an HDV 1080i sequence and need an SD DVD this is the way to go…SO FAR! I’d still like to see the quality better but in fact I’d like to see the quality better from Blackmagic NTSC-Jpeg, DV, etc… codecs to DVD but have yet to come up with something that I’m happy with.

Thank you to everyone for their input.

Happy Holidays

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]

Tim & Anne,

Thank you so much for yourt input and advice! I have a project we just started that I will be able to test your responses on. I appreciate and post my result but I feel confident that it will work with that added step. It makes sense.

Happy Holidays

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