Timothy Anderson
Forum Replies Created
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Hey Kris –
If I got a sample of one of the title cards to you as a 4 sec. QT (it’s 7.5MB or so), would you be willing to see what results you could get in compressing it into MPEG-2 using Compressor? So I know I am not a complete idiot? Keeping in mind ultimately the title cards have to go into a DVCPRO HD sequence in FCP as part of a feature-length project.
I am racking my brains here and at this point maybe I’m to blame – I am sure I have entertained and annoyed enough people in this thread…
Tim
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Single-layer, but I figured out the pulsing last night – the titles are what I am trying to figure out how to preserve in MPEG-2 –
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Hi Kris –
I used both 1920×1080 Motion QTs in Animation and ProRes. codecs – which look fantastic in the QT, but terrible when compressed to MPEG-2. It has to be the MPEG-2 compression.
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Hi Kris –
Thank you very much for the response and very clear method instructions. I will try it – I know the Illustrator film file was DVCPRO-HD 1080 but I am not sure if it was done natively at 1080×1920 or if the aspect ratio was customized to ‘match’ the DVCPRO-HD codec of 1280×1080. I will give it a go and test further…
As for the compression pulsing – your info was helpful – I did not know about the difficulties this long shot presented to VBR two pass – I will def. demo BitVice after this whole thing….
Tim
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Hi Michael –
Yeah no way anything is going through DV – I tried a couple tests with the titles bounced out of Motion at 720×480 QT just to see if that would solve the scale problems in Compressor and it didn’t help – I had the same problem at SD native titles as the HD titles….
In your opinion is a 6.5 CBR better than a 6.6/7.8 Two/One PASS VBR (not the VBR best setting – that’s where we get the pulsing)? Wouldn’t the capability of going up to 7.8 greatly benefit a feature film during camera moves, etc. that forcing those at a 6.5? I guess I don’t know what’s the better trade-off, everything at 6.5 or the ability to go to 7.8 for certain parts of the show that could greatly use the extra 1.3…
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Hi Jeremey,
Sorry if the post was confusing. The titles were created in Illustrator at the 1280×1080 DVCproHD film setting yes. Each title card was then exported as a .PNG with transparency into Motion. In Motion, the titles were positioned and a black background was added and then each title card was exported as a QT. I tried both 1280×1080 DVCPRO-HD and ProRes 4444 1920×1080 QTs out of Motion and in both instances, the MPEG-2 done in Compressor yields the same, poor quality results. Two pass VBR Best, Two Pass VBR, CBR, One Pass VBR – they all were unable to compress the titles well. All in all these are to be brought into FCP to a DVCPRO-HD 1280×1080 sequence to ultimately go to DVDSP to burn to SD DVD. Hope that is more clear.
I also tried creating 720×480 SD title QTs out of Motion thinking maybe it was just the resize scaledown that was the problem, but those QTs also suffer greatly in MPEG-2 compression using Compressor. I have tried all sorts of things…I am starting to think it is out of Compressor’s ability to yield a good result with these titles in MPEG-2…
Tim
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Hi David,
Just an update – so I was able to re-render the Illustrator titles in Motion in ProRes 4:4:4:4 as you suggest above and in the raw .mov QTs, I did notice a small improvement of the titles. HOWEVER, when encoded to MPEG-2 via Compressor, the same terrible results persist with no visable improvement.
I have literally tried dozens of different workflows, settings, etc.. and am beginning to become convinced it is impossible to achieve clean, crisp titles from Illustrator on a SD DVD made by DVDSP and encoded for said DVD by Compressor. Compressor just can’t seem to do it correctly – neither able to scale down HD titles appropriately nor able to produce good results even when the Illustrator titles are created at native NTSC DVD 720:480 (anamorphic or not).
Out of ideas – downtrodden…
Tim
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Hi again,
Thank you very much to everyone first of all for the help – it is much appreciated:
Jeremy – the footage was P2 card based from Panasonic. The HD titles created in Illustrator were created in a ‘Film’ artboard at the DVCPRO HD 1080 setting. This is rectangle pixels. The pixels in the Illustrator docs. are native 1920×1080. Those were then sent out as .PNGs into Illustrator where they were placed and rendered out as QTs to match the sequence settings in FCP. I have tried compression markers on both troublesome areas.
David – that ProRes 4:4:4:4 re-render is a good idea – I will give it a try. You are correct in that they are DVCPRO HDs out of Motion and that they are predominantly RED – haha. However, they do appear solid and fine when an HD QT is rendered out of FCP so would the ProRes solve anything if the problem is Compressor’s ability to downscale the titles well? I guess I will see…. Would it be better just to throw the RAW Illustrator files in over slug in FCP in place of the QTs that were rendered out of motion?
On the pulsing: So, would it be agreed to go with a One Pass VBR best setting in compressor given the pulsing problems with the two pass VBR and that a solid CBR will not fit onto the DVD at 90 mins. setting? The one pass does eliminate the problem, but what would your recommended bitrates be for the one pass?
THANKS!
Tim -
Hmmm – Yeah I re-confirmed all of my workflow settings – all derive from a 23.98 fps timebase throughout from FCP into the MPEG-2 in Compressor. To be honest the footage itself looks great on the rest of the DVD outside of some occasional black noise typical of SD – nothing concerning, it’s just this one 15 sec. patch from the scene that is part of a long, static shot with little movement except very subtle foliage moving in the breeze in the background. I think this subtle movement is ‘sneaking’ past compressor because everything else is so still for so long it drops its bitrate here, resulting in the pulsing – the fact that a CBR encoding of this scene stand-alone at 7 erases the pulses convinces me. I just have never seen VBR one pass best outperform two pass best and can’t understand why…
On the HD titles – they were created as vector graphics in Illustrator as individual cards, brought into to Motion to place and add black over transparency, then exported at DVCproHD proper codec to match sequence. Again, the problem lies within how FCP/compressor is downsizing/rescaling them because in the HD QT they are fine in the sequence….I am baffled on this front really – even a 720×480 export in ProRes422 HQ of the title sequence alone (just to test) yields the same poor results…
tim
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Hi Jeremy –
I’m encoding the audio track to Dolby. Could you speculate why I would be getting a better result with the one pass best? Also, I don’t know if you’ve followed the thread and are briefed on the other problem I am having of the HD title sequence looking terrible on DVD – I can’t solve that one either and am really put off because the titles are originally vector based and then converted to individual QTs at the same HD codec as the film so I do not understand why there are downscale issues – isn’t that the ultimate advantage of vector titles from Illustrator?
Tim