Rafael Amador
Forum Replies Created
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[Catherine Tosko] “I have exported my movs out of FCP and into iMovie because I am using the titling function of iMovie, also helps me bang out to Youtube, Distrify etc., I know the FCP purists will think this is a bad option but I have heavily subbed film here and the subs in FCP were too time consuming.”
The problem about iMovie is nothing related with purism, but just technical.
iMovie compress whatever SD stuff to DV and whatever HD stuff to Apple Intermediate codec. Both are very poor options.
Also downgrade the audio to 32Khz, and puts out without TC track.
All this makes iMovie not suitable for most professionals, otherwise more people would use it, because it has very interesting options and tools.
rafael -
[Rafael Amador] “BitVice does a much better job (use open GOPs by default) and has a very good downscaling filter.”
Here I made a mistake about the downscaling capability of BitVice.
Sorry, I had in mind “Video Purifier” (from the same company), that is a de-noiser and re-scaler.
Purifier is integrated in BitVice for de-noising, but not for rescaling, as far as I know.However I stand for what I said about making much better MPEG-2 than Compressor.
[Sascha Engel] “1. When you download it, there is a paid and a free version – what are the differences?”
There is a demo but I can’t tell you if is watermarked or time limited. Out of that has no differences with the licensed version.[Sascha Engel] “2. What are the settings, that work best for you in it? There is a lot of parameters, I don’t know what to set, such as Color, Matrix, Transfer, IntraDC, Spatio?”
Most of the parameters get set automatically when you import your movie (color, matrix. transfer,..).
– Check the Purifier window and set 1 if your video has little noise, or 3 if it has a lot of noise. For a very noise video, use a better de-noiser (NeatVideo in FC) before the MPEG-2 compression.
– The IntraDC is to allow the app to work in 9 or 10b. The guys of BitVice say that they put the option just because sis possible to do it, but you don’t really gonna see much difference on setting it other than 8b.BTW, MOTION has a good downscaling filter inherited from SHAKE. Is call “Lanczos”. In the Image Units > Geometry adjustments.
Bit tricky to use it.
rafael -
I don’t see nothing wrong on your original picture. Nothing too bright or too saturated.
BUT for the two gray bands that I see in the Parade snapshots (up and down), I can see that you have set “Render always in 8b RGB” in your Sequence settings.
Set “Render in high Precision YUV” in your Prores sequence. Don’t use the Animation codec.What I can see as well is that the original picture has a 1 pixel wide frame all around the image. Is almost black but has different tonalities (it can be just because the Aperture). This might be causing the super-blacks. You can see that with the Digital Color meter (utilities).
Another thing is that the blacks are too high, so blacks are no real blacks (like the guy head). But this can be a designer decision.So try what I told you with Prores HQ and “Render in high Precision YUV”. Then drop the RGB Limit filter on top to clip the super-blacks. I don’t think you have any super-white.
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[Sascha Engel] ” But I assume the learning curve of Shake is rather steep. “
Not for such simple task. Is just like applying a filter and setting the size you want.About BitVice, let me have a look to the newest version.
The truth is that I don’t use it since more than one year ago that i made my last DVD.
I had no idea there is a free version.
I’ll post again.
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[Gary Boland] “but not true”
Then your FC went nuts.
I’ve saw many times misinterpreting field order and pixels aspect, but never misinterpreting size or codec.
rafael -
So, as Eric points out,if you want HD, download the tapes, instead of using the CF cards.
rafael -
[Miriam Lefkowitz] “From what I understand, Apple made Shake and discontinued the software. Is there a way to download Shake now?”
I don’t think Apple still selling it (although after FCs EOL they have been selling it out of the Apple Store), but I think you should be able to buy it through eBay or so.
Ine terms of up/downscaling SHAKE has the best algorithms ever designed and haven’t been much development on this field since SHAKE was released.
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[Sascha Engel] “Is there an encoder that does a better job, when wanting to encode HD Material for SD Video?
What’s with Episode? It’s better'”
BitVice does a much better job (use open GOPs by default) and has a very good downscaling filter.
Making good MPEG-2 is not just about giving high data rate (I would never make a CBR even if is at the top data rate), but also about the GOPs structure. You should experiment a bit with Short and Open GOPs. And always with VBR.[Jessica Muth] “You will get artifacting via software going from HD to SD. The best conversion is hardware down conversion, via Teranex.”
This is very arguable.
There is no reason for hardware downscaling to be better than software downscaling. First because it doesn’t really exist such “hardware downscaling”: any piece of hardware is just applying software.
Second because a software downscaling don’t need to be done in RT, so the system has all the necessary time to do a perfect job.
The only question is to find the proper software solution.
Compressor is pure shit, but give a try to SHAKE.[Sascha Engel] “Interesting. Thanx. So actually it means, that all tape based recorded cameras write the information Interlaced to the tape, even though it is shot progressive?”
Right.
That’s called “PSF”: Progressive Segmented Frame. Is the way camcorders can use all the mechanic developed for interlacing to record progressive. Developing a full progressive system would have been more expensive.
But don’t worry, your stuff still being progressive. Just need to be interpreted as progressive by any application on importing.
rafael -
I guess your file contains some unsupported codec.
FC do not support H264, Mp4, etc.
Try with one of the usual production codecs.
rafael -
Make sure that in User Preferences > Editing tab you have checked “Always Scale clips to Sequence Size”.
Then open a DV Anamorphic sequence and drop the DV 4×3 stuff on it.
rafael