Crap quality MPG2 DVD Pro

Guys.
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Does anyone here know how to get decent looking DVD's out of Compressor or inside DVD studio Pro?

I cant. They either stutter due to high data rate (7-8 mbps)
or they look horrible.

We had to get a PC with a matrox card which does it perfectly every time and in real time.
Dont care about the realtime but the quality issue is very very annoying.


Anyone made a decent DVD from a MAC?

<<<a matrox card which does it perfectly every time >>>

And the model number is.......

<<<Anyone made a decent DVD from a MAC?>>>

Sure, from the earlier versions of MPEG2 Export. Do it every day which is why we still have one machine we haven't upgraded yet.

Compressor has eluded us so far.

<<<or they look horrible.>>>

How horrible are they?

Koz

not only does the compression look bad, but it takes forever to compress, especially if you ask compressor to use good quality. For any project around a hour in length, I use QT movie and let Studio Pro compress it.

Johan - this might be a stupid question, but have you changed the settings to PAL? Once you've done this you need to start a new project and then import your media.

Since we're on the subject, what does everyone (Greg, Graeme, anyone) think is the best way to get the highest-quality DVDs using FCP?

I've just finished a 45-minute documentary with a lot of graphics. I exported the documentary as a self-contained movie, then dropped it into iDVD and made a quick DVD. Quality looks fine ? I'm just wondering if the quality would improve if I were to use DVD Studio Pro (which I own but haven't used). Is there a benefit to exporting the movie as an uncompressed quicktime and then using DVD Studio Pro to do the compression? Or using compressor? What settings do you recommend? Any personal experiences on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
Thomas

iDVD uses fixed compression which is why they can go by time and not filesize. It pretty high, too. 7.5 or 8 (total), so it can look pretty good.

I got into it with the people over at the DVD Studio Pro forum. Compressor violates all three (or four) cardinal software rules: It's more expensive, it's slower, and it doesn't seem to produce significatly better results.

Number four is the company had the bad form to try and force us to use it. We're keeping a G5 with FCP 4.5 and MPEG2 Export running just so we can meet FedEx at the end of the day.

You know the trick, right, that Compressor is significantly faster if you dump a self-contained movie into it instead of using it as a Final Cut Export Tool?

Koz

Although all my apps work fine (encoding time etc.), I have found that whenever I tested the same series of clips from an FCP DV timeline in all my different encoders, the results are as follows: Quicktime 7.04 best result
BitVice close second
MegaPEG Pro third
Compressor 2.0.1 noticably worst
I always export from FCP as Quicktime movie, then import that into each app. to encode. Can't explain why Quicktime gives a better result, but I have experimented with a lot of settings, taken the tutorials and referred to the manuals within each encoder to attempt to get its best quality.

Tom

<<<Quicktime 7.04 best result>>>

Oh, now *that's* good to know. I didn't know QuickTime Pro 7 could do that. "QuickTime Player" is entirely misnamed. It's the user layer for all the QuickTime Services.

I did a "delay broadcast" last night by connecting my Canopus to my PowerBook and recording a TV show in H.264. In QuickTime. The physical tape part of my VCR was dead, but the television tuner parts still worked.

I'll be watching later with the PowerBook propped up on my tummy.

Koz

Guys, there seems to have been some interest in this topic.

Koz:
-The quality is so bad that I cant hand it in even to my corporate clients for some @#$%& training DVD. Poor color and pixelation during dissolves, even on 7mbps.

Jude.
-Not a stupid question but I always use PAL since I'm in oz so no issues there.

I cant really export a selfcontained reference movie from FCP as that seriously compromises any graphics that I have put on top of the footage. (lower thirds etc loose a lot of quality)

My original fear seems to be well grounded:
-We have to keep the damn PC for DVD's.
If anyone else are having issues like these I'd recommend the Matrox card, just stick it into some @#$%& old PC and render out in realtime from Premiere.
(I finally found a use for Premiere, he he)

Thanks again guys

<<<I cant really export a selfcontained reference movie from FCP as that seriously compromises any graphics that I have put on top of the footage. (lower thirds etc loose a lot of quality).>>>

[Loudly Ringing Bells]

What!?!

That's why Compressor is failing. You're feeding it garbage.

If you can't export the show, how are you getting it into Premiere? What happens if you take the PC feed and apply that to Compressor?

<<<selfcontained reference movie>>>

You can either have a Reference Movie which is a really tiny file that points to existing clips (which you can't move), or you can have a Self Contained Movie which is very large and contains everything.

Koz

Koz.

i may not have been entirely clear earlier.
I'm not feeding compressor garbage.
I render out an uncompressed animation and then I generally use DVD studio pro, so there is no loss of compression along the way before the mpg2 compression.

If you export a reference movie from an FCP timeline that has graphics added from After Effects for example, the reference movie will downgrade it to DV PAL and they will look like ****. The same goes if you export it from After Effects as DV PAL and take it into FCP, they will also look like ****.

If you export it as an animation they will look fine.

If you dont believe me, do the same and put the two files next to eachother in quicktime.
(The video is fine but graphics look crap in DV PAL)

I take it into Premiere by exporting the sequence to tape and then I import it into premiere via a Sony Deck.

I dont know why this looks a million times better than exporting an FCP movie and moving it on a firewire drive into Premiere.
maybe someone can enlighten me?

The great thing with the PC Matrox is that it renders the mpg2 straight from the timeline and it is always perfect.

Is there a similar card for MACs?

<<<I take it into Premiere by exporting the sequence to tape and then I import it into premiere via a Sony Deck.>>>

Serious Twilight Zone Moment.

<<<Is there a similar card for MACs?>>>

Well, let's see if we can identify the actual problem. If your timeline is DV and you go in and out of "Animation" codec, that means the machine has to convert between DV Compression and Animation Codec. If you do an effect in the show, the same thing happens, Any time you do an effect, the machine has to uncompress the DV work for the duration of the effect.

It is said that "QuickTime Conversion" should be avoided. Export QuickTime Movie keeps the TimeLine compression with no changes (assuming you're on Final Cut 5).

It is also said that the best you can do if you're going down your pathway is to convert the whole show to 8 or 10 bit uncompressed right at the capture stage. Any effects you do after that are native to the timeline and don't take decompression or any other rendering or damage. Getting in and out of After Effects should be a simple affair as well.

Save the show as a QuckTime Movie (not QuickTime Conversion) and yet another layer of damage goes away.

If you save as a self-contained movie and drop that into Compressor instead of using the Compressor Export inside Final Cut and you will save a lot of time. We're not sure whythis is, but it happens to everybody.

When you play a DV timeline timeline to a DV tape, the timeline and the tape machine match and you miss at least one layer of compression damage.

Anything you do inside FInal Cut or Compressor means you are missing two times the length of the whole show from going into and out of tape.

Compressor may be a pain to use, but the results most people get are not shockingly bad. There has to be a step (or two) that you're doing wrong.

It's also suspicious that you can't export a self-contained movie without the picture turning to mush. That is most unusual behavior. Also, we don't use Animation Codec. If you're up for a test, use PhotoJPEG export with the quality slider all the way up instead of Animation. We use PhotoJPEG all over the building and just don't have these compression problems.

Koz

Koz

Thanks for your input.
never tried the Jpg export but I will next opportunity I get.

is there anyway I can post 2 frames from the 2 different compressions on this forum just
to show what I mean?


I know this does not make much sense but its the only way I can get it to work (Animation export)

I am in FCP 5 and when I export Quick Time Movie as opposed to Animation the quality on the graphics bits are very noticably poorer on the finished file than what they were in the timeline. Its as if the compression happens when i go from FCp to a Quick Time Movie.
Maybe my mistake lies in exporting the lower thirds from After Effects as Animation with alpha. If I export them as DV PAL from After Effects they look horrible though.

If I understand you correctly you mentioned converting to uncompressed at the capture stage. I'm not sure I understand this.
-Are you saying I should edit the whole show on an Uncompressed timeline?
That means all my footage has to be rendered constantly when I take it in or make a change?

I may have misunderstood you.

Sorry if this sounds confusing but I guess it is.....

Guys:
Let me just bring some info which has been discussed over and over in the DVD SP forum.All the information is there, if you just scroll down the messages

* Compressor is the highest quality software encoder on the Mac. And quite close to the best software encoders on any platform, period (like TMPEG). You only need to learn to set it up properly. Compression gurus like Ben Wagonner have compared it with other Mac encodrers like BitVice, Digigami MegaPEG, Mainconcept, and they prefered Compressor. Instead of wasting space justifying this claim, let me refer you again to the DVD SP forum. It was discussed many, many times.

* Compressor (and other software encoders) are closing the gap with the expensive hardware encoders. There's no way an inexpensive board will be better, and certainly not faster (unless they are set to CBR or 1 pass VBR). If you want a quick encode in Compressor, set it to CBR or 1 pass VBR (just don't ask for the best quality). It will be close to real time. At 2 pass VBR, Compressor is 2-4X real time, which is something we could only dream about some time ago!

* You don't, again, you DON"T call Compressor from within FCP. You could die waiting. Instead, just export a self-contained or reference Quicktime file, and feed that to Compressor. Not only the compression stage takes forever when you fire Compressor from FCP, but also just setting it up is unbearable. Not to mention the (otherwise amazing) capability of bringing "raw" Motion and Livetype project files as clips into DVD SP. It's torture!

* Going from DV NTSC to MPEG-2 is a disaster in terms of quality, since DV NTSC has 4:1:1 color sampling and NTSC DVD has a different 4:2:0 scheme. You are destroying most of the color information, at the end. HDV on the other hand is 4:2:0 but so heavily compressed... that it just doesn't handle well yet another pass through a lossy compression scheme like MPEG-2.


* Compressor 2 has amazing technology, taking advantage of some very sophisticated visual manipulation technology that would have been unthinkable some time ago. It can do standards conversion with hardware level quality, convert 4:3 to 16:9, convert interlaced to progressive or viceversa, etc. as long as you are 1) willing to wait for the enormous amount of time those things can thake, and 2) again, learn how to set it up (the frame controls tab is the key for all this).

All the best!



Post Edited (03-28-06 20:59)

Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires - Argentina
www.adolforozenfeld.com

<<<<Let me just bring some info>>.

Excellent.

Missed one.

The instructions mention being able to process using multiple machines. Two of our G5s are on Gig-E network. Anybody ever try that?

Koz

I haven't done it myself. You manage the whole thing with the Qadministrator application. This concept of render farms is extremly important in 3D and compositing apps. All of them have some sort of network rendering. Even more, for 3D work, there are render farms that you can rent and use over the Internet! One of them is called "Render King"

Anyway, I didn't see the need for distributed processing for plain MPEG-2 encoding, because 2-4X real time is something that's fine for me. Standards conversion is a whole different story. It takes ages. Buying several Quad G5s just to do that is not a great idea, because just taking the footage somewhere to get the conversion done could be mor practical. But, many people already have a couple of G5s, so it could be an intersting option in those cases.



Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires - Argentina
www.adolforozenfeld.com

<<<just taking the footage somewhere to get the [PAL] conversion done could be mor practical.>>>

Or there's always good ol' Nattress which we've been using for a while now. It produces good enough work for our purposes and it's enormously faster than Compressor.

We did an emergency standards conversion for Elizabeth using Nattress and only if you're paying strict attention and knew ahead of time that about a quarter of the show was in the wrong standard would you be able to tell.

<<<It can do standards conversion with hardware level quality>>>

It does motion prediction? That could explain why it takes so long. That would be worth waiting for.

I gotta get better at using that thing.

Koz

Hey, Greg!
Graeme's plug-in is absolutely amazing. Really, really useful. Graeme will correct me if this is not true, but if I remember well, his findings were that his technology was about 40 times faster for what he called just a bit lower quality. I would say more than a bit (because when Compressor does it well, you can't tell the converted file from the original at all!) But still Graeme's tool is very practical for regular use and Compressor frequently is not. Unless you want the very best and you don't mind waiting (days for long files).



"It does motion prediction? That could explain why it takes so long. That would be worth waiting for."

Motion compensation is the term they use. I understand is related to optical flow technology. In any case, it has to be seen to be believed. It's not only great at frame rate conversions and such, but it also bypasses the #1 rule of bitmap technology. It actually allows you to "upconvert" things without the expected pixellation. As I said, take a letterboxed movie, crop the black bars and Compressor gives you a true 16:9 file with no evident degradation. How about that? All of this, of course, as long as you enable the frame control options and set them to "better" or "best".

One problem, though. In some cases, it introduces some bizarre "liquid like" artifacts in motion graphics material. Go figure...

All the best!



Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires - Argentina
www.adolforozenfeld.com

<<<Motion compensation is the term they use.>>>

That's the one. Our old hardware converter would figure out the parts it couldn't deal with and apply an appropriate blur. It worked remarkably well, and, of course, it did it all in real time plus two frames.

It had eight fans in it and took four people to lift.

The classic problem is the soccer/football. If a player smacked the ball hard enough, it would only appear in NTSC. In PAL, it would start here and magically arrive over there. Getting between those two standards and still make a believable soccer/football is a challange.

First I heard of the liquidy soccer/football, though. I'm not shocked they might have problems like that. I'm amazed any of this works at all.

One more that came up after this thread started. TMPGEnc will produce a perfectly nice "System Stream" MPEG2 file (*.mpg) with picture and sound smashed into the same file. That seems to make everybody who needs a muxed file happy.

I'm trying to figure out the difference between that and Transport Stream. Classically, you couldn't do either one on a Mac.

Koz