[Peter Wolsey]

If it’s any use to anyone struggling to make decent mp4 / wmv files on a MAC, I found Streamclip gave consistently dissappointing results when used on the Mac, but then took the advice that Streamclip encodes these files much better on a Windows PC.

I installed the free Quicktime Player, then the free Streamclip (bless those guys) encoder, and very quickly was producing excellent H264 files that look very good on Windows Media Player and VLC Media Player.

It worked for me, anyway.

[Peter Wolsey]

As an addendum, for the benefit of anyone else with this particular problem – we found a solution.

Bearing in mind that the shows have to be delivered in SD (and will never surface as HD) we hit upon this solution. We created a new SD timeline and copied/pasted all the original HD timeline onto it. This made the Digi clips play perfectly, as expected, and the HD clips look fine after rendering (about an hour for a 30min show). No problems with interlace issues, though inevitably there’s a lot of resizing to be done.

Lessons learned:
1. It seems that FCP doesn’t like upscaling SD to HD – in fact it can’t do it successfully unless you go via Compressor.
2. FCP is totally fine at downscaling HD clips to SD with no visible interlace or quality issues.
3. If you have to mix HD and SD footage, then capture the material using a Kona 3 or LHi card (or similar) that will upscale properly in real time.

We live and learn!

[Peter Wolsey]

The bulk of the footage was shot HD, that’s why we chose to edit in HD, though it’s only ever going to be broadcast in SD.

Interestingly, the picture quality is great after the Digi up-convert to ProRes. But the clips simply appear to have lost their interlace properties. In hindsight we should have captured the Digi stuff properly through the Kona card.

It’s the first time we’ve ever tried to do this and I assumed that Media Manager would handle the up convert without a problem, so I guess we learn by our mistakes. Oh well, a few late nights ahead then…

Thanks for input though. Always reassuring to know there’s a good resource out there.

[Peter Wolsey]

Dave- We use a Sony CRT monitor, and will finish on a Flanders Scientific LM1760W monitor, so we’re seeing accurate pictures.

Shane – We captured the footage as 8bit uncompressed SD with a Blackmagic card (where I suspect my mistake was.)

Nick – Two of our suites are fitted with the Kona Lhi cards, I suspect that your right and we may have the unwelcome task of recapturing in 1080.

However, the programmes will be delivered in SD on Digi tape. Does this make any difference to the possible solutions?

[Peter Wolsey]

Thanks for the quick response Roland.

Just tried what you suggested, but still struggling. Could you let me know how you’ve set up the various dialogue boxes (ie the Conversion Preferences and the Target preferences). I’m sure thats where I’m going wrong. I manage to create a STL file but it just contains info on the titles setup but no subtitle text.

Thanks again, Pete

[Peter Wolsey]

Thanks for this Wayne. Sorted it out now. The Batch Capture Clip Settings window had the option to select the number of channels grayed out, so couldn’t adjust that. But I found that I could limit the number of channels in Capture Preset in Audio/Video settings.
The problem was that even after I’d done that, the original clip files ‘remembered’ that they were to capture as 16ch (despite the original media files being made offline and deleted), and so they had to be changed via Clip Settings in the bin.
Just read this and even I’m baffled – but at least it’s working now! Thanks again.