[Sarah Kali]

Success!

Thank you for your clear and logical advice.

Turns out that the company doing the digital transfer to the networks made a mistake in saying that they thought the file had an issue with the field order mismatch on the dissolves and that it was fine!

Kind of annoying, but I’ve learnt a lot through your help so now I have more knowledge to draw upon in these kinds of situation and a better workflow in general.

So thanks everyone!

Sarah

[Sarah Kali]

Daniel,

Thank you for your reply. Data Rate info very helpful.

I have always used None compression as the intermediate file when enoding to MPEG2 because MPEG2 hates DV and the graphics look markedly worse for wear when you go from DV to MPEG2.

I’ve carried this idea on to to creating the H.264 but from what you say – not neccessary. I will run some tests using a reference file.

Thanks for the info, very much appreciated.

Sarah

[Sarah Kali]

Walter, Andy and Rafael,

Thank you so much for your very thorough replies to my post. Very much appreciated and I am learning a lot.

I can see now the chain of events the led to me thinking that I had to make the project upper field first.

So for TV broadcast doesn’t matter if its lower or upper as long as you don’t mix – even though broadcast formats are upper?

Anyway, I will keep everything at lower field first.

That was interesting what Rafael said about the choice of intermediate file being influenced by the type of file you are encoding to.

What format do other people export their final DV movie file into from FCP before encoding into their distribution format.

I’ve mainly used QT None and sometimes QT animation.

Could the problem that I had on the dissolves not be a field order problem at all but a compression artefact?

I encoded from QT None Compression file into the highest H.246 settings I could find in compressor (I’m running FCP Studio 2.

It was the company who I sent the H.264 to for distribution to the networks who had an issue with the dissolves and they must
look at a lot of H.246 TVCs so I took their word for it that it was field order and not compression artefact.

(By the way, H.246 is the highest quality format they accept for digital transmission to them. No MPEG2)

Thank you again for all your help, I’m learning a lot from your collective experience and sound advice.

Sarah