24P DVD

I have a half hour movie shot in 24P Advance.

My common workflow to make a DVD has been to export it as a quicktime movie and import it into DVD SP, and let that program do the Mpeg2 coversion before burning.

But now I am interested in making a 24P 16:9 DVD of this project, to see if I notice a marked improvement in picture quality.

I was all prepared to import the timeline into Compressor for the conversion, to preserve the 24P. But in doing a search on this site, I was surprised to discover that there were different opinions on the proper workflow for making a good DVD, including the use of Compressor at all.

Let me start out by saying there are a lot of filters, color correction and titles in the project.

Have others found Compressor to be lacking as a quality Mgeg-2 converter? If so, what is a better alternative?

In short, what have others found to be the best workflow to preserve picture quality when making a 24P 16:9 DVD?

Thank you in a advance.

<<<Have others found Compressor to be lacking as a quality Mgeg-2 converter? If so, what is a better alternative? >>>

It's not so much that we hate DVDSP, it's more that it's so much more involved to use than just plain MPEG2 export from FCP. Export is a quick lesson on the optimal settings for most of the work we do. DVDSP is a college level course on Data Limits, Motion Variables, and the thousands of options that are available for making a DVD.

I don't think there is any substantial quality difference between them. Given how Apple does things, I would suspect it's exactly the same binary engine doing the work, just with a different control panel.

Compression is an art form. "What's the best compression for my movie." is in the same field as "What's the best color for a sunset." Each choice has good and bad points. If you have a lot of motion, your choices will be very different than if you have lush, grand color and fine detail. If you have both in the same movie, the Big Kids change compression *during the movie* to match.

It doesn't lend itself to one-word answers or handy automation.

Koz

You mean there isn't just one button I can push to make a perfect DVD?

I actually have to know what I'm doing? I hate when that happens.

<<Have others found Compressor to be lacking as a quality Mgeg-2 converter?>>

Yes, sadly. Even the very latest version.

<< If so, what is a better alternative? >>

Others have stated that BitVice gives far better results.



- Justin Barham -

<<<You mean there isn't just one button I can push to make a perfect DVD?>>>

Well, there are the stand-alone DVD burners. Many of them produce disks that very effectively mirror the NTSC or S-Video that is applied to them. In that case, they do produce a perfect disk. They require a number of pushes of buttons, but they are just to stop, start, and finalize the disk, not to select compression algorithms.

Koz

What Koz said above.

I had a client who just wasn't satisfied by any[/] output Compressor produced, no matter what we did to it before, during, or after. Finally we ran it through a Sony DVD burner, extracted the MV2, brought it into DVDSP and he was instantly happy.

Compressor still needs to clean up it's act. I don't know what it's going to when AltiVec is gone. Dark times.



- Justin Barham -

If you want to make a 24p DVD, don't:

a) export to MPEG2 from FCP,
or
b) export to compressor from FCP,
or
c) let DVD SP do the compression.

In all those cases (read the DVD SP Manual) you'll get a 29.97fps DVD with incorrect pulldown added and it will be BAD!@!@!

What to do is:

File -> Export Quicktime Movie....

Accept the defaults, and if you've got the hard disc space make it self contained. Take this movie, by hand, to compressor or whatever you use to make the MPEG 2 and compress it there. Make sure that if appropriate you make sure the software knows it's 24p and to make it a 24p MPEG2. Compressor knows about 24p if used in this way and gets it right with any of the presets.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

Graeme Nattress wrote:

> If you want to make a 24p DVD, don't:
>
> b) export to compressor from FCP
>
> In all those cases (read the DVD SP Manual) you'll get a
> 29.97fps DVD with incorrect pulldown added and it will be
> BAD!@!@!

Even if the frame rate is set to 23.98 in compressor and you import the 23.98 MPEG2 into DVDSP?! I do this all the time and it seems to work fine, although DVDSP incorrectly reports the asset as being 29.97.

That's fine Guy. Just don't export to compressor direct from FCP as that mucks things up. You've got to take the movie there yourself.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

That's what I meant, I've been exporting directly from the FCP timeline with " export using compressor" and it seems to work fine.

Guy, I've never had success doing that myself. Have they changed things in FCP5, or.... Back in DVD SP 3, the manual specifically advises against this, and I've not had success myself. I've not tried with FCP5 and the new production suite though. Does the mpeg 2 look "right" if you view it frame by frame???

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

Graeme Nattress wrote:

> Guy, I've never had success doing that myself. Have they
> changed things in FCP5, or.... Back in DVD SP 3, the manual
> specifically advises against this, and I've not had success
> myself. I've not tried with FCP5 and the new production suite
> though. Does the mpeg 2 look "right" if you view it frame by
> frame???
>
> Graeme
>

I've done this in FCP 5 and 4.5 and DVDSP 3. I use the compressor presets, which have frame rate set to "automatic" and then confirm that it's 23.98. I'll go back and check the mpeg2 again frame by frame, but I'm 99% sure it looked good. Quicktime 6.x reports the files as 23.98, quicktime 7 rounds it to 24.

I think QT& is just being liberal with the truth. QT often tells lies about frame sizes and frame rates....

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

So I can't even export a self-contained movie and have DVDSP do the asset conversion? It will still incorrectly make a 29.97 DVD? That bites.

Has anyone had any problems with low-end DVD players not being able to play a 24P DVD? This thing is doing the festival submission circuit, and there is no telling what they are going to be watching it with.

Anyway, thank you for the discussion. Luckily what I lack in technical expertise, I make up for in hard drive space. So I'll try it a bunch of different ways, and see what I'm most happy with.

Thanks again.

<<< It will still incorrectly make a 29.97 DVD?>>>

The system is intended to make a 29.97 DVD with the appropriate flags set so if you have a player that "knows" what 24 is, it will play at 24/48--or 72 in some cases. Otherwise, it looks like every movie you've ever rented at Blockbuster.

Koz

If you stick a 24p quicktime directly into DVD SP, it first just adds frames (doesn't do proper 3:2 pulldown) to make it up to 29.97fps, and then encodes that. You get none of the advantages of a 24p DVD (increase picture quality due to less compression) and it will look bad.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

I went back and checked a 24p MPEG2 that was exported directly from a FCP5 timeline via compressor and it looked good, no interlacing or duped frames. So unless QT player is somehow ignoring or hiding duped frames I think it works fine.