Apple Compressor & DVD Studio Pro Problem, Please Help!
 

Hi,

I'm on a Apple G5 using Final Cut Pro 5, Apple Compressor, and DVD Studio Pro 4 and I'm having trouble getting my DVDs that I've burned from DVD Studio Pro to run in my set top DVD players.

When I play the burnt DVD in my set top player it plays, but has an annoying whine created in the speakers when on the DVD title menu. It also skips at certian points in the film.

When I try playing the DVD in my Xbox it won't play at all.

I believe all my settings are right in DVD Studio Pro. I'm using 8x DVD - R Memorex DVD's. They've always have worked before.

I encoded my 12 minute short with Compressors "DVD Best Quality 60 minutes 6.2Mbs Two Pass Mpeg 2" file with the audio as an Dolby AC3 file.

I then imported that and designed my DVD. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. Could it be Compressors problem? Is 6.2Mbs bitrate Mpeg 2 file to big? Is their an important setting in DVD Studio Pro I need to have on, so it will be recognized? I'm really stumped on this one.

I'm also getting artifacts when encoding on Compressor when theres a fast moving image. Whats the best way to eliminate these artifacts? Boosting up the bitrate? Downsizing the GOP? I new to this stuff.

I'm on a time constraint, so any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

Your video is only 12 minutes long so you don't really need to use Compressor to do the encoding or the AC3 conversion. You can let DVDSP do all the encoding. For audio it will use PCM recording, which is fine since you don't need to use AC3 in this case (its main advantage is to reduce the size of the audio to leave more space for video).

In the DVDSP encoding preferences you can choose single or dual pass, fixed or variable rate encoding. Dual pass variable bit rate takes longer to encode, but gives the best results for most things. Once you choose your encoding settings, don't mess with the sliders that control maximum bit rate, just use the default (safe) settings.

As for your audio whine at the title menu, you might have (inadvertantly set) some audio to be played for that menu, would be my guess.

Lastly, artifacts are often a normal result of encoding DV into mpeg2. Video with a lot of action or movement doesn't encode without some artifacts. No encoder settings can alleviate that problem, at least none that I have found.

Mike,

Will having PCM audio on my DVD cause any playback issues on older set top players? I heard the safest route to go was AC3.

I have used PCM audio on my old DVD player (1997) and my new one (2002) and never had a problem with it.

If nothing else you can build a version of your DVD with DVDSP's built-in encoding just to see if it makes a difference to your playback problems.


Mike.

Mike,

I'm having another problem popping up. Now, on one scene where I have a close up of fire, the fire has big pixalated blocks and smearing on the inside flame. I know the white levels are super high, over 100, on these two shots, but when I bring the white levels down in Final Cut Pro, it just causes the same problems, where I see the smearing again in Final Cut, where before I didn't. Have any idea on how to fix this? Do I actually need to boost the white levels up? Thanks for the help.

Sorry, I don't know what that problem is other than what I said earlier about how mpeg2 doesn't handle fast motion over large areas of the frame very well. The compression gets overwhelmed and is forced to pixelate just to keep up.

There may be some magic that a compression specialist knows about, but I haven't found it yet.


Mike.

compression markers
 

for scenes like fire, it may be a good idea to encode seperately with a higher bit rate. Be sure to use 2-pass vbr with the motion estimation setting set to best (I believe it's on better by default). You can set compression markers in FCP to isolate the fire scene and earmark it for different bitrates.