[Palius]

A new edition of Ben Waggoner’s book is in the works according to the CMP editor I spoke with at Streaming Media East. It was in the proof reading stage at that time.

Regards,
/mp

[Palius]

I don’t work with HD footage but I often use MXF with DV sourced projects with XPress Pro 5.2.4 on a PC. (Assuming everything in windows and avid is at default settings:)

In the box that has the tabs: “Bins”, “Settings”, an effect icon, “Format” & “Info”, flip to the settings tab.

Double click “Media Creation”. A “Media Creation – Current” box with several tabs across the top opens. Go thru the tabs right to left. e.g. start with “Media Type”. Here are some of the settings you’re looking for. Set them as appropriate. I set everything to MXF. Click “OK”

Now double click “Audio Project” 16 lines or so above where you first clicked “Media Creation”. Adjust the settings in the “Main” tab. Close the dialog box.

Almost everything I create is for web delivery so after double clicking the “Export” line, I export as QT-Ref and make all the settings the same as my project and let my CODEC apps do all transcoding.

Hope this helps.

regards,
/mp

[Palius]

Rich Rubasch writes:
>a multipass realtime encoder

Using a conventional definition of “realtime”, encoding in 1:1 time as a source is fed, aren’t multipass and realtime mutually exclusive terms? How would a CODEC begin the 2nd pass until it has the results of the 1st pass? How can it complete the 1st pass until the source has completed injesting? (assuming 2nd pass requires >0 t.)

regards,
/mp

[Palius]

Squeeze works with QT 7
Procoder works with QT 6.5

anybody know when/if Procoder will upgrade?

regards,
/mp

[Palius]

A good place to start is defining your target audience and delivery method. The appropriate compression for webcasting to the cornfields or other parts of the world without broadband will be vastly different from the appropriate compression for creating DVDs.

Ben Waggoner’s Compression for Great Digital Video (c) 2002 CMP books could stand an update but it covers the groundwork. Since you asked for a starting point….

Regards,
/mp

[Palius]

Allow me to contribute an unsolicited endorsment for Digital-Rapids.

We bought a (then) maxed out Dell Precision 670, a Digital Rapids 1500 card and StreamPro software not quite 2 years ago to replace and consolidate an aging Pinnacle Stream Factory as well as an obsolete editing and compression box. The Dell + card cost less than a turn key StreamZ and has more horsepower.

There may be better technical support out there then D-R but I’m yet to stumble across it. Dan is both responsive and knowledgeable. I feel it’s made the higher entry cost relative to the other boards we looked at very worthwhile or as my boss says, “We got our money’s worth.”

VBrick may be perfectly excellent I have no direct experience with them so cannot reliably report. My capacity to play with toys exceeds our budget to buy them. If anyone cares to make a tax deductable donation….

Regards,
/mp

[Palius]

Take a peek at:

rtsp://media.cc.columbia.edu/law/temp/test/5secondclip8.rmvb

I’ll leave it up for a little while but shouldn’t leave it on that server indefinitely.

I created it from your AVI using Sorenson Squeeze 4.3.303.17
using these setting:

compression: (my standard starting point)
video:
realvideo10
2 pass vbr
450 Kbps
320×240
29.97 fps
30 seconds/key frame
normal video mode
3 sec latency
loss protection

filter:
brightness 20
white restore amount 5 smoothness 15
black restore amount 5 smoothness 15

It’s not an exact duplicate of the AVI’s qualities but it’s a fair starting point for further tweaking. I don’t know your required tolerance for exactness.

Regards,
/mp

BTW, I was unable to open your flash version on either my office desktop box or my editing/compression box which was flash & director installed.

[Palius]

“The blacks are darker than what I had. The whites are glowing.”

Could be out of bounds color. It’s been so long I really need to check a reference so caveat notwithstanding: NTSC black is 16, computer video black is 0. NTSC white is 240(?), computer white is 255. If one fails to translate/adjust project settings it can generate problem. Superblack (IRE 0-15) contains synch data. Super white (IRE 241-255) contains audio data.

Hope this helps,
/mp

[Palius]

Real encodings tend to come out darker than the source unless one compensates. Real throws out about 98% of the bits. (I.e. I just finished a project: 25 GB source ended up as a 0.5 GB Real file.

Sorenson 4.3 has decent enough Real CODECs. I find the interface simple enough for a beginner to use yet flexible enough to finer tune projects. Work with a short sample of your project to speed up the fine tuning phase. Drag the lighten filter (top left)onto your project (bottom right). How does it come out. Double click on the filter. It’ll open up the filter setting page. Change some of the settings. Click OK. drag it onto your project. Make another test encoding. Repeat as necessary until you (or your client) are satisfied.

There are reasons to bitch about Real media and the company that owns it but it has been universal (players for Win, Apple, LINUX & Solaris) for years and makes copmpact files.

I cannot write from experience about Windows Media but I imagine the issue and resolution is similar.

Regards,
/mp

[Palius]

NT