blu ray newbie seeking advice w/ FCP output

im making a blu-ray play all version of my short using toast 9 as my authoring software.

i shot the piece on a sony xdcam ex 1, edited with FCP and ready to make some Blu Ray backups.

question: how should I go about outputting from FCP to make sure my HD film looks as good as possible?

my idea: export using quicktime conversion, select none under the codecs. I have a 25GB disk and my six minute short ended up being about 21GB (I think 4GB will be enough buffer for the author, no?) I figure i'll drop in toast and it should do its work.

since FCP has compression support for 720p XDcam (the exact mode I shot it in), I'm curious if I should export in that format? The file size however is A LOT smaller than choosing none compression and I'm worried there might be some data loss, or that it might not be as good as "None" compression.

Maybe my instinct that bigger file size is better is wrong. Please correct me if so!

Any advice?

You need to make a H.264 file, not a None Codec file.

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Can anyone else confirm or deny this? I love H264 for all my SD normal projects, but is it really a good idea to save my HD movie in this codec?

Not saying your wrong Kevin, but I think doing a small H264 file on a 25 GB disc is a bit suspect...

Thanks!

Blu-ray supports MPEG-2, H.264 and VC-1. The correct choice is H.264. MPEG-2 is only there for backwards compatibility, and Compressor doesn't include a VC-1 encoder.

You absolutely do not want to use "none," because "none" is an RGB format. Your footage is YUV. You'll see gamma shifts and possibly banding in areas of subtle gradation if you go from YUV to RGB and back again.

XDCAM is a long-GOP format, and as such, you don't ever want to use it for anything but recording in your camera. Exporting a timeline from Final Cut into XDCAM format will reduce the quality of your footage, because XDCAM can't survive repeated encodings and decodings and re-encodings.

The best choice here, most likely, is to use ProRes 422 as your intermediate format, then generate an H.264 from that file with Compressor.

Is it OK to edit in the native XDCAM settings
(ie: XDCAM 1080p24 for 24p footage)
EXPORT as QT Same Settings, No recompress, Self Contained
and then take this into compressor.

I have not seen too much generation loss in this method;
but thereagain as an animator for years I have always poo-pooed
any and all compression.

For example, when you export a animation sequence from 3ds Max;
you get the best quality in the RGB Uncompressed and then you lower
it down to what ever compressed format you have to use to your HD.

So, in animation world you have the option of exporting compressed
(if you wish); but in video world it usually is all compressed, so you
don't have the choice...


>
> XDCAM is a long-GOP format, and as such, you don't
> ever want to use it for anything but recording in
> your camera. Exporting a timeline from Final Cut
> into XDCAM format will reduce the quality of your
> footage, because XDCAM can't survive repeated
> encodings and decodings and re-encodings.
>
r.

Well, you do have the choice of whether to subject your footage to a second heavy compression pass.

Can you lay XDCAM back off to XDCAM again? Sure, it's a free country. Should you? No.

Would one of the Kona 10bit uncompressed be more appropriate?




Jeff Harrell Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Well, you do have the choice of whether to subject
> your footage to a second heavy compression pass.
>
> Can you lay XDCAM back off to XDCAM again? Sure,
> it's a free country. Should you? No.

The best answer is still ProRes 422.

Does a H.264 file encoded with Compressor work in Toast natively? As I understand it, if you're using Encore to burn a BD the only viable, cross-compatible option is to burn an MPEG-2 for Blu Ray, as an H.264 isn't recognized by Encore and will end up getting re-compressed. It would be great if there was a work-around for that, as I agree that MPEG-2 isn't generally the best option for compression.

On the other hand, isn't XDCAM an MPEG-2 format? Is there possibly a way to simply transcode XDCAM into Blu Ray-compatible MPEG-2 without recompressing? It seems to me this would be ideal, as there wouldn't be any quality loss whatsoever. As long as your project fits on a Blu Ray Disc in the native XDCAM format, this would seem to be the best option if it's possible.