[Przemek Pyrek]

Hello,
it’s been some time since i’ve been here, but i hadn’t any acces to the Internet.

I’ve tried you’re suggestions and i’ve come to the following conclussions ;-):

– Using “frame controls” in Compressor gives poor effects, though i must say that i’ve encoded my footage with the lowest settings possible because otherwise my iMac was processing at 1fps. I don’t say you’re wrong about using “frame controls” but it’s clearly not the best approach for me.

– It seems Compressor really does handel fields automatically, even without any “frame controls” on.

– The best result i got was leaving everything as it was – that means input upper field and SD PAL DVD lower field (as i always did with DV footage).

Please don’t get me wrong i appreciate all your advices very much, what i want to say is just that this is the best solution for me ;-).

Thx again
Przemek

[Przemek Pyrek]

Hi.
The best way to export your HD project is to use QT h264 or DivX HD.

1. To have an HD video on Vimeo you have to upload a 720P file (1280×720 pixels big). H264 works great, but there’s some saturation loss. I read somewhere that you should boost gamma a little bit before compressing. As for fps setting, you should set 25 with a keyframe every 24 frames and compress with the frame reordering option ON. As for bitrate i recommend not going below 5Mbps and always compress with multipass. Files are big, but they look perfect on Vimeo, after recompressing to Flash. Vimeo has 500MB upload limit per week.

2. Use h264 or DivX with native 720P resolution but with smaller bitrate around 2Mbps.

3. There are presets for that in Compressor.

4. Upload the same files you have for Vimeo or download if they fit 100MB limit or recompress with smaller bitrate.

5. No. And it’s pointless in such a low bitrates. More frames – a smaller bitrate per frame – a worse quallity. Converting 50 to 25fps goes rather smoothly.

6. To play h264 on a PC you need QT installed. You can also play it with VLC player. You can use DivX, but not every PC has DivX installed… ;-).
To get good quallity in DivX i recommend compressing from ProRess file in QT, Compressor can’t do DivX, FCP gives poor quallity sometimes.

7. Use settings that are native for your format. If you shoot progressive then there’re no problems at all when compressing to another progressive format (no fields to worry about).

Hope i helped. Good luck!

Przemek

[Przemek Pyrek]

Thank you very much for explaining everything in detail, you’ve been more than helpfull!
Now those fields don’t stand a chance against me! ;-D

Przemek

[Przemek Pyrek]

Oh Man, i’m so sorry, thx for correcting me! I really got lost in the basics today… :(. It’s my first time with 1080i, and i’m out of time, doing 3 things at once… I wish everything could be progressive… 😉

Each time i wrote ODD i really ment EVEN.
So i got my HDV ODD upper field and want to get it to SD PAL DVD – i’ll try what Rafael sugested – making upper field MPEG2.

THX again, sorry for the mess!

Przemek

[Przemek Pyrek]

I just got more confused ;-), but i’ll try your sugestions guys. BIG THX!!!
I always thought that PAL must be ODD (lower) and you cannot change that without causing problems :-).

It still seems a bit strange to me, i’m not sure but can you really preserve fields form HDV in SD, aren’t they in different number in those formats?

Przemek

[Przemek Pyrek]

Well… i asked the question so i’m not an expert on the conversion subject, but one thing i know interlaced SD PAL DVD MUST have odd fields dominance.

[Przemek Pyrek]

Hi,
my input fields on HDV are upper, and output on SD PAL odd, as they should be for those formats.

So i asume i’m doing things right… ;-). Right?

If you want to, you can see the result here:
https://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=SmpzUGhXcWZEbUpjR0E9PQ
2,7MB only

Thx
Przemek

[Przemek Pyrek]

Hi,

i would try de-interlacing SD in FCP first and exporting to HDV 1080p25 with letterboxing on sides – that way there should be no problems with field order and it should work with i50 footage just fine on a p25 timeline (there should be no problem with applying de-interlace filter to i50 later).

As for the aspect ratio, i’d rather consider cropping it to 16:9 in Compressor just to avoid blowing it up again in FCP later and have another quality loss.

Good luck!
Przemek

[Przemek Pyrek]

I’m in such a hurry and panic that i completely missed “none” in compresssion list in AVI export. Looks great and even works on Windows. THANK YOU A LOT, YOU ABSOLUTELY SAVED MY LIFE TODAY 🙂

Przemek

[Przemek Pyrek]

Hi,
thx for advice, i will try to capture and edit HDV tomorrow on friends MBP, i tried to do that on my PowerBook once, but it’s definitely too slow. If it won’t work then i’ll go to ProRess HDV via FW.

As for output i’ll probably need only SD, so there’ll be no problem here, my only concern was if the AIC is good enough for capture and editing, well maybe i didn’t look good enough but i couldn’t find any information on that matter and right now i don’t have the HD monitor so i really can’t tell how it looks.

OK, thx again ;-).