OT: Compressor TC Burn

We are shooting XDCAM, encoding that to H264 for Apple TV which works great but when I add a time code generator in the filter pane to the H264 encode it increases the time it takes to encode by four to six times.

Is there any way to improve this?

I have tried a great utility, QT Synce for adding a time code burn to Quicktime movies but it causes the video to skip. Is there a way to add this to "Quicktime Components" in Compressor so that I can stay within compressor for the final encode in the same way you can encode Flip4Mac or Episode?

Add the TC to a separate XDCAM nested timeline, render down, then export a SCQTM before you encode...



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I have nested the XDCAM sequence and then added effects>video filter>video>time code generator and then exported a self contained Quicktime. Is that what you meant.

It still took quote a while to export and then encode. This seems like it should be such an easy task, I can't imagine why it takes so long?

You know you can carry on editing and doing other things whilst compressor is running...

I presume you are taking the SCQTM and importing into Compressor and not exporting directly from FCP?

Also that you have setup your Qmaster to take advantage of any extra processors or Macs on your network?

What's your setup Chuck?



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I have six Quad cores on a shared fiber channel SAN so you'd think I'd be using Qmaster. But nooo. I tried setting it up about a year ago and it just seemed to be a bit flaky, but our system administrator assures me it will work very well now.


I guess I didn't think about the fact that XDCAM is a long GOP similar to HDV and that its not trivial calculating the TC.

Chuck

Appreciate you're trying to maintain best quality but can't help thinking that rendering out an XDCAM native master only in order to recompress to H.264 is not doing yourself any favours.

You might want to try rendering out a self contained ProRes 422 intermediate w/ Time Code burn in and use that with Compressor to create your H.264 master. It should export from FCP very much more quickly than an XDCAM export and it ought to be handled by Compressor more quickly too.

For the timecode burn you can nest or just drop a TC Generator on an upper (cropped) slug track, (or there's a TC Generator "Generator" on my web page you can use if it suits you).

Cheers
Andy