Ive heard that using compressor isn't that good and not worth using and that final cut pro can output its movies extremely good. Anybody have any input on this. I also was wondering if I am using final cut pro footage 1080i hdv and have compressor and dvd studio pro, which is the best workflow and way to make the best quality dvd?

I tend to just use final cut for all my outputting, I shoot 1080i 50i and then output in pro res 422 at 1080i 25p.

I mostly output in FCP in it's original settings of the sequence, and if I need other versions for web and dvd, I all do them in Compressor. It gives me the oppurtunity to put things in a batch, and have more control over the image when needed.

if I want to make a dvd whats the best way to do it using dvd studio pro and compressor to get the best quality?

I tend to just use final cut for all my outputting, I shoot 1080i 50i and then output in pro res 422 at 1080i 25p.
There's no such format as 1080i 25p!!!

Ive heard that using compressor isn't that good and not worth using and that final cut pro can output its movies extremely good. Anybody have any input on this. I also was wondering if I am using final cut pro footage 1080i hdv and have compressor and dvd studio pro, which is the best workflow and way to make the best quality dvd?

As Mathieu says, you should use Compressor for all your exports unless you are keeping the original settings and yes Compressor/DVDSP is the way to go for DVD. Do a search there are many threads here on this topic.

if I want to make a dvd whats the best way to do it using dvd studio pro and compressor to get the best quality?

Use Compressor for DVD encoding, not DVDSP. Better control = better results.

Ive heard that using compressor isn't that good and not worth using

What exactly and where did you hear that? I personally like Compressor and have no issues with it. I know some have complained about stability issues with Compressor (I have not had any), but I have yet to hear a complaint about its quality.

For any transcoding, I love Compressor's usage of clusters on a quad-core for fast rendering times.

I have just been doing a QT Ref file straight outta FCP and then dropping that into iDVD for most of my dvd's. Is compressor a better method (timewise or quality-wise?)
-Steve

I have just been doing a QT Ref file straight outta FCP and then dropping that into iDVD for most of my dvd's. Is compressor a better method (timewise or quality-wise?)
-Steve

Yes and yes:)

Ive heard that using compressor isn't that good and not worth using

Sorry, but that's rubbish. Compressor is fantastic, and you can achieve some amazing results with it. There are heaps of posts around this forum on the best DVD workflows, but generally speaking you use Final Cut Pro for the editing process, Compressor for transcoding and/or compressing your media, and DVD Studio Pro for putting together a DVD. Each piece of software is designed for a different stage in the post production workflow. They are all powerful and extremely effective tools if used appropriately.

what is the best workflow or does it not matter

1 .... drop your Hd edited sequence into an sd timelime before exporting to compressor dvd best quality 90mins.

or

2 finalcut HD timeline straight to compressor dvd 90 mins best quality


3 HD time line, export to HD DVD 90 mins, then to dvd studio SD DVD

There are lots of more detailed threads on this topic in the DVD Authoring section of this forum, however generally speaking, if you export out a "Quicktime Movie" and then bring that into Compressor you will achieve fantastic results. Compressor's "90 Minutes Best Quality" preset will achieve nice results, however you can play around with those settings (deinterlace, add sharpness, etc.) to really fine tune the result.

what is the best workflow or does it not matter

1 .... drop your Hd edited sequence into an sd timelime before exporting to compressor dvd best quality 90mins.

or

2 finalcut HD timeline straight to compressor dvd 90 mins best quality

I haven't personally played around too much with option 1 to know which, if any, is better. But option 2 gives you more control over the conversion, which is why I opt for that one.

3 HD time line, export to HD DVD 90 mins, then to dvd studio SD DVD

I would never consider this an option as it is a very lossy workflow. Making a conversion of an already compressed conversion is something I would avoid whenever possible.

hi, everyone says compressor is great and maybe it is...what's going on?! i shoot in HD, edit in HD timeline in final cut pro 7, then export to CBR 6.8 or 7 QT movie. i will import that into compressor at the 90 minute best quality setting, tweak it for best results! then import that into DVD studio pro! the DVD looks like garbage on tv!!! does DVD studio pro encode the already-encoded compressor footage?!?! can i turn off encoding in DVD studio pro!?

i got best results by exporting hi rez QT file as H.264 from final cut pro 7 and importing that massive file into iDVD....yes, iDVD. iDVD encodes it great and it looks outstanding! a cheaper program to do a better job?

this is why i don't want to use compressor. either compressor is garbage or DVD studio pro is going to do what it wants...encode / compress again! too bad DVD studio pro doesn't see H.264 files like iDVD does. maybe i should just use iDVD?

so, am i right? is DVD studio pro encoding an already-encoded file brought in from compressor? i have wasted hours, as you all have, in experiments.

thanks so much,
Steve

i don't think DVDSP re-compresses after compressor has already done the job.
as far as i know, DVDSP and compressor share the same encoder (if that is the right word for it) but compressor gives you precise control over the many facets of the processing which, if used properly, will produce a better product.
i have had horrible results from compressor, and then, when i learned more about the program and improved my overall shooting/capturing/editing/output workflow, had amazing results.

the only thing i picked up in a forum was that compressor has some problem with 2-pass VBR for encoding to mpeg-2 dvd such that it is not much better than 1 pass VBR, so I have used 1 pass VBR in compressor in my projects (to go from prores to mpeg2)

anyone else ever hear of this?

cheers

There are lots of more detailed threads on this topic in the DVD Authoring section of this forum, however generally speaking, if you export out a "Quicktime Movie" and then bring that into Compressor you will achieve fantastic results. Compressor's "90 Minutes Best Quality" preset will achieve nice results, however you can play around with those settings (deinterlace, add sharpness, etc.) to really fine tune the result.

this is also exactly what i did and when i watch it back on my 720 flat panel tv and my imac for that matter, the DVD i made is pixelated! counter tops are jagged squares instead of a nice line. is there a secret check box i'm missing? is there one hidden that says "remove jagged pixels from video?" i got the best results when i exported as a really sweet 1920 HD in H.264 from FCP (no compressor.) i took this massive file and brought into iDVD and let iDVD encode it. the SD DVD looks really good this way. i would love to use DVD studio pro but it doesn't handle H.264 unless i'm making an HD DVD, which i don't want to do... i need to make an SD DVD.

so i guess for whatever reason, i'm stuck using iDVD for SD DVDs and whatever i need to do to make blu ray. i have the blu ray burner but now need to read up on that process.

Sherif, i have heard of that same thing myself.

i want to thank everyone here for being so helpful and thanks for your knowledge! i'm doing exactly what everyone else is doing from what i can see, but it's pixelated! the only time it's not is when i drop that H.264 file into iDVD. during playback it's like....THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKIN' ABOUT!!! NICE VIDEO!

it's unfortunate that dvd studio pro makes you jump through hoops to get great video out of the presets. you should have to hunt for all the hidden check boxes.

Steve

In my opinion, the "trick" is to use the Frames settings in Compressor to convert your interlaced footage to progressive. This is something that Compressor does very well (and that iDVD, or DVDStudio Pro won't do)

Leonard gave you the answer in the XDCAM EX forum: http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/1448608-post26.html

But yes, I agree. It's silly that Apple didn't turn on the Frames settings in any of their factory settings, but I'm guessing they did that to save people time on encoding.

Hi Steve,

1. What exact version of Final Cut Pro are you running (i.e. 7.0.1)?
2. What version of Mac OS are you running?
3. What version of Quicktime are you running?
4. What camera and format are you shooting on (i.e. Sony Z1P, HDV, 1080i)?
5. How are you bringing that footage into FCP (i.e. Log & Transfer, Red Rushes, etc.)?
6. What are your sequence settings? Can you post a screen shot?
7. What effects, if any, are you applying to the footage?

Brian is correct - both Compressor and DVD Studio Pro use the same underlying technology to transcode footage. He is also correct in saying that if you bring transcoded footage from Compressor into DVD Studio Pro it will not go through the transcoding process again.

Exporting to H264 prior to MPEG is a horrible workflow that I would certainly not recommend. NEVER compress things more than you have to - and never just throw out information for the sake of it.

I would suggest that the issues you are having are all due to the fact that you are shooting on an interlaced format and then trying to view it on a progressive screen.

Have you tried Mitchell's suggestion of using the Frame Controls?

Unless you've undiscovered some serious flaw with the latest version of Compressor, I would suggest that it's a problem with your workflow, rather than Compressor being at fault.

We are currently dual booting both FCS2 and the latest version of FCS and haven't found any of the issues you're having with Compressor, and we use it on a daily basis.

Good luck!

Best Regards, Chris!

Chris, thanks for your help...all very good questions man! here are the answers... also, unfortunately, i was unable to do anymore testing last night after work because i fell asleep on the couch at 7pm!!! due to staying up so late with this for a few days! anyway, i'm anxious to try out the TRICK.

by the way, i have NEVER exported to H.264 and then used compressor for mpeg. i know that would be very bad. it looks terrible just going from FCP timeline (pre-rendered...not that it matters) to compressor and right into DVD pro. what i did with H.264 files would be to import them right into iDVD since iDVD accepts them and encodes them really well.

here are my answers....

1. What exact version of Final Cut Pro are you running (i.e. 7.0.1)?
THE LATEST, SO I GUESS THAT WOULD BE 7.0.1

2. What version of Mac OS are you running?
SNOW LEOPARD ON IMAC 3.06GHZ CORE 2 W/ 4 GIGS RAM AND I KEEP UP WITH ALL UPDATES

3. What version of Quicktime are you running?
NEWEST...QUICKTIME X

4. What camera and format are you shooting on (i.e. Sony Z1P, HDV, 1080i)?
I SHOOT WITH CANON HV30 AND XHA1. I SHOOT IN 30P...29.97. WHEN I CAPTURE TO THE FCP TIMELINE I CAPTURE VIA TAPE AND SET TO HDV1080i60. THERE ARE SOOOO MANY CAPTURE SETTINGS. THIS IS WHAT A COUPLE FRIENDS RECOMMENDED AND IT WORKS GREAT.

5. How are you bringing that footage into FCP (i.e. Log & Transfer, Red Rushes, etc.)?
CAPTURING REAL TIME, LOG AND TRANSFER

6. What are your sequence settings? Can you post a screen shot?
I DON'T HAVE ANY SCREEN SHOTS. IF YOU NEED THEM, HOW DO I DO THAT ON MAC?

7. What effects, if any, are you applying to the footage?
NO EFFECTS AT ALL. JUST FOOTAGE...MAINLY CUTS AND SOME FADES.

I have been using mac since mid-summer. i have used pc's all my life and haven't looked back at pc since my imac purchase. mac is outstanding. i know my way around machines and encoding really well but i'm getting used to the codecs. by saying this, it doesn't mean i don't know what i'm doing...i have spent hours / days with encoding on pc format and now mac. i have followed line by line and it looks bad. i'm wondering if i found the holy grail for settings with the frame setting. it's a shame one has to search multiple forums to find all the check boxes needed for an SD DVD. thanks so much and as soon as i get that test done...maybe tonight... i will post results.

I have stumbled on H.264 and LOVE the looks of it. then i read most people are using H.422. not sure what the difference would be. i bought an external blu ray and have to now figure out a blu ray workflow. it works great on the pc but i want to switch to mac. i will probably have to use encore for menus...not sure yet.

thanks,
Steve

There's no such thing as "H.422". I think you're referring to ProRes 422, a great codec that would be a perfect intermediate codec to go from FCP to Compressor.

You should do all your encoding in Compressor. Gives you more control, doesn't tie up your editor, its faster because it has been written to use all the cores of multicore processors (unlike (FCP or DVDSP), and you can batch a bunch of jobs before going to bed.

There's no such thing as "H.422". I think you're referring to ProRes 422, a great codec that would be a perfect intermediate codec to go from FCP to Compressor.

sorry, you're right. ProRes 422, not H.422. So is this file smaller than H.264? the H.264 looks outstanding! i don't know anything about the ProRes 422, how big it is, if it's for blu ray as well, etc etc. I have seen the H.264 and it's great for blu ray. when you say go from FCP to compressor do you mean you export right from FCP timeline into compressor and use the ProRes 422 codec? or do you export from FCP using the ProRes 422 codec and then take that into compressor?

Hi Steve,

Thank you for your reply.

To take screenshots with your Mac please refer to:

Taking Screenshots in Mac OS X - Mac Guides (http://guides.macrumors.com/Taking_Screenshots_in_Mac_OS_X)

1. Could you please take a screenshot of the "Final Cut Pro > About" menu, so that we can determine exactly what version of FCP you're running? Just saying "the latest" really don't help if you're not completely sure.

2. Could you please take a screenshot of the "Apple Logo > About This Mac" menu. That way we can determine the exact specs of your machine.

3. Do you have Quicktime 7 installed? If not, I highly recommend installing it. For details please refer to:

Installing QuickTime Player 7 on Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3678)

Once you've done this could you please take a screenshot of both the "Quicktime Player X > About" menu and "Quicktime Player 7 > About" menu.

4. Before you capture and start a new project. Please try going to "Final Cut Pro > Easy Setup", then select "HD", "29.97" then "HDV 1080i". This should set up your timeline correctly. Try starting a new project, capture a minute of footage from your HV30, then click "File > Export > Quicktime Movie". Open this file in Compressor. Apply the "DVD Best Quality 90mins" preset. Let it do it's thing. Then bring that file into DVD Studio Pro. How does that look?

5. I think you mean "Log & Capture"...?

6. If you could take a screenshot of your sequence settings that would be great.

If you're still having issues, try trashing your Final Cut Pro preferences. For details please refer to:

Technique: Trouble-shooting Your FCP System (http://www.larryjordan.biz/articles/lj_trouble.html)

To be perfectly honest Steve, the fact that you don't know how to take screenshots on a Mac, nor do you know the difference between H264 and ProRes 422 tells me that you are still very much a beginner when it comes to video editing on the Mac. That's not a problem at all - but please don't say that "Compressor is garbage" when you have no idea what you're doing...

Please be aware that I'm live in PAL land - so if anyone else notices some advice I given that's incorrect in terms of frame rate settings please let everyone know!

Good luck Steve!

Best Regards, Chris!

Chris, thanks for the info and i will try that stuff as soon as i can. i'm learning FCP and all the steps so i am a beginner with this OS but what i mean by garbage is...it just doesn't make sense that there are so many hidden check marks to mark off such as the frame rate settings for quality, etc. not sure why apple didn't make that a default as on. i love FCP but from a standpoint of settings and such, there are just as many as adobe products but they at least have the defaults at what they should be. i'm in no way a beginner to editing and its frustrations but with the mac, i am. i have been wrestling with FCP and finding out how it does things for the last couple months. i never quit and never give up but when i keep reading to try the same things that have a success for everyone, and i still get pixelations, well, i've had it. i will try what you suggest. i do have it set for easy setup with the 1080i when capturing. by the way, i have done pretty much what you said to already and the video looks great on the screen on the imac with DVD preview. after it is burned to disc it is, what i say, garbage. so there seems to be something that happens when i click on BURN DISC. that is why i was wondering if DVD studio pro will encode what was already encoded. i was told that isn't so. i can't think of anything else. it looks great till i view that DVD. i do have QT 7 on my mac. not sure why both 7 and X are on there. i would think that X would override 7. at least, that's how it would be in pc world.
thanks,
steve

Hi Steve,

I can completely understand your frustrations... There are always a million road blocks and detours with video editing... The more time you spend doing it, the more second nature navigating around the back roads becomes!

Before you do anything, make sure you have "Use High Quality When Available" selected in the Quicktime Player 7 preferences.

1. If you export a self-contained "Quicktime Movie" of the sequence and view it in QT7, how does it look? Screenshot?
2. If you bring that Quicktime Movie into Compressor and use the "Best Quality 90mins" preset, then bring the MT2 file into DVD Studio Pro and simulate it, how does it look? Screenshot?
3. If you Build & Burn it, how does it look when played on the Mac in DVD Player? Screenshot?
4. How does it look on a standard DVD player connected to your TV? What kind of TV do you have? LCD? Plasma? CRT?
3. If you bring the Quicktime Movie into iDVD and preview it how does it look? Screenshot?
4. How does it look after you burn it to DVD both on the Mac and on your TV?

Again, I think what's happening is simply an issue with viewing interlaced footage on a progressive screen.

Have you tried using MPEG Streamclip?

Can anyone else who uses the HV30 in NTSC land provide any helpful advice?

Thanks!

Best Regards, Chris!

Chris,
thanks again! the most recent update is rendering / encoding in both iDVD and compressor as a test last night. i have yet to see the results.

what i did:

exported the hi - rez H.264 QT file right from FCP7 at 1920X1080 and imported that file right into iDVD09. made a menu and it took about 4.5 hours for iDVD to encode this and burn a disc (i went to bed so i will check it out tonight.) i know it will look great since i have done this before.

also, i ran the test and frame optimization was already on for compressor. i exported to the 90 min. profile right from FCP7 to compressor but i altered it, making it CBR 6.8. i do not like VBR at all. imac said 14 hours to render this but it was done sometime before 6am when i checked it (taking less than 8 hours since i started it sometime around 10pm.) when i get home i will feed these 2 files: vid and audio from compressor, into DVD studio pro and see if it makes any difference. there were only a couple settings that i changed in compressor, remember, frame optimization was already on and one of the only things i changed was going from "project settings" to "progressive." sorry if the terminology (timeline / project settings) is wrong...i'm not in front of the imac and there are a lot of settings to remember.

if this compressor thing doesn't work, i'm perfectly happy exporting the sweet hi-rez H.264 file from FCP7 right into iDVD09. it works and the menus are nice...pretty much the same. i will come back to this eventually but right now i have wasted every night till midnight for the last week in experiments. i need sleep and i need to get projects done.

to answer your questions...

Before you do anything, make sure you have "Use High Quality When Available" selected in the Quicktime Player 7 preferences.

1. If you export a self-contained "Quicktime Movie" of the sequence and view it in QT7, how does it look? Screenshot?

NO SCREEN SHOTS, IT LOOKS AWESOME!

2. If you bring that Quicktime Movie into Compressor and use the "Best Quality 90mins" preset, then bring the MT2 file into DVD Studio Pro and simulate it, how does it look? Screenshot?

NO SCREEN SHOTS, IT LOOKS PRETTY GOOD

3. If you Build & Burn it, how does it look when played on the Mac in DVD Player? Screenshot?

NO SCREENSHOTS. IT LOOKS BAD! PIXELATED! STRAIGHT LINES, LIKE COUNTER TOPS, WHATEVER, ARE MADE OF SQUARE DOTS, AND REZ LOOKS LIKE VHS TAPE.

4. How does it look on a standard DVD player connected to your TV? What kind of TV do you have? LCD? Plasma? CRT?

GARBAGE...LIKE IN #3. LIKE A DECENT VHS TAPE. I HAVE A PLASMA 720P. WHEN I MAKE IT IN IDVD, BRINGING IN HI REZ QT MOVIE INTO IDVD AND LETTING IDVD TAKE THE 1920 H.264 FILE DOWN TO 720x480, IT LOOKS NICE.

3. If you bring the Quicktime Movie into iDVD and preview it how does it look? Screenshot?

NO SCREENSHOTS, IT LOOKS NICE.

4. How does it look after you burn it to DVD both on the Mac and on your TV?
LOOKS BAD, LIKE A DECENT VHS TAPE. THIS TELLS ME THAT SOMETHING IS GOING ON IN DVD STUDIO PRO AFTER COMPRESSOR.

I SHOOT IN 30P, CINEMODE USUALLY. something is wrong with something in compressor or dvd studio pro and i have done everything. the viewing tonight will tell. the only thing i changed was to PROGRESSIVE instead of TIMELINE SETTINGS for frame settings...

not sure about what is going wrong, but to save a lot of time you could only transcode one minute of your sequence to check the quality...

hey guys!! success, i'm pretty sure. stayed up till midnight last night looking over all settings, making new menu from scratch in dvd studio pro and importing the file encoded from compressor. from what i can tell, i did nothing different except:

compressor setting - FRAME CONTROL! this was already on by the way when it looked pixelated for me. the only thing i changed was resize filter = BEST and changed output fields to progressive. these 2 little settings and it looks different. i have yet to view it on the tv upstairs. on the imac it looks nice...i was happy.

i did notice some pixelation, especially with text / titles. this is when it was full size on the 24" imac. when i right-clicked and selected half-size, it went away...hope it looks good on the tv.

the only thing i notice that i don't like is the video clips i chose for the drop zones in the menu. they do look noticably pixelated! but, i exported 30 second clips using the exact same compression preset, exporting right from FCP7 timeline into compressor. not sure what the deal is with that. looks fine during preview in DVD studio pro but not on actual DVD.

to answer my question from before... doesn't look like DVD studio pro encodes again. compressor already did it so it just burns it after compiling the menu. for the menu, 45 minute movie, it took about 8 mins. to encode the entire disc!

encoding the 45 minute movie directly from FCP7 to compressor with the 90 minute best setting (tweaked by me to be CBR 7), it started at 9:30pm roughly, and ended at 3:45am. not too bad...about 6 hours for 45 mins? so i guess 12 hours for 2 hours you can say...to go from 1920 HD to 720 SD via compressor. i will keep you posted of any other events. you guys were awesome!

i knew what i was doing, but those 2 little settings....why would they do that! it's tricky and there are so many workflows!

i wonder if this should be a concern.... i shoot in 30p and capture in 1080i...easy setup...then i export to progressive. going from progressive to capturing in 1080i then to progressive vs. 1080i.... throws me.

i shoot in HD
There are many flavours of HD, can you be specific?

edit in HD timeline in final cut pro 7, then export to CBR 6.8 or 7 QT movie.
You export from FCP to what kind of QT movie? What are your exact settings?

i will import that into compressor at the 90 minute best quality setting, tweak it for best results!
What are the exact tweaks you are making?

then import that into DVD studio pro! the DVD looks like garbage on tv!!! does DVD studio pro encode the already-encoded compressor footage?!?!

On what kind of TV are you evaluating the picture and how is the video signal being delivered to the TV? (HDMI, Component, Composite, Coaxial, S-Video). DVDSP shouldn't be re-encoding your video unless it needed to due to incorrectly formatted assets being imported.

can i turn off encoding in DVD studio pro!?
Yes, but you shouldn't have to.

i got best results by exporting hi rez QT file as H.264 from final cut pro 7 and importing that massive file into iDVD....yes, iDVD. iDVD encodes it great and it looks outstanding! a cheaper program to do a better job?
Why would you go out to a lossy format and then add compression again for DVD? Something in your workflow isn't right, I suspect your trouble starting from when you export out of FCP.

so, am i right? is DVD studio pro encoding an already-encoded file brought in from compressor? i have wasted hours, as you all have, in experiments.
Perhaps. If it is, you didn't give it correctly formatted media. I have not had these types of issues with DVDSP at all. It's been smooth sailing for me, and I output DVDs on a somewhat regular basis through a FCP -> Compressor -> DVDSP workflow.

What are your system specs?

the only thing i picked up in a forum was that compressor has some problem with 2-pass VBR for encoding to mpeg-2 dvd such that it is not much better than 1 pass VBR, so I have used 1 pass VBR in compressor in my projects (to go from prores to mpeg2)

anyone else ever hear of this?
Never heard it, never experienced it.

by the way, i have NEVER exported to H.264 and then used compressor for mpeg. [...] what i did with H.264 files would be to import them right into iDVD since iDVD accepts them and encodes them really well.
In other words, you exported H.264 and then used iDVD for encoding to MPEG-2... it's the same thing.

I SHOOT WITH CANON HV30 AND XHA1.
OK, so you're shooting HDV and editing in an HDV timeline. I suggest you search through the "HDV vs Pro Res" timeline threads to learn the ins and outs of editing with these formats. I'm guessing that when you're not exporting as H.264 out of FCP, you're exporting as HDV -- is this correct?

I suggest you take your finished timeline and change the settings to a Pro Res 422 setting and rerender your timeline, then Export QuickTime (not the conversion) which will give you a QT file using the Pro Res 422 codec. Put that through Compressor.

I have stumbled on H.264 and LOVE the looks of it. then i read most people are using [Pro Res 422]. not sure what the difference would be.
Significant differences. Completely different specs, completely different uses. H.264 is a delivery codec -- used for on the web, on mobile devices, certain specs used for Blu-ray. Pro Res is an editing codec -- which is pretty much what that sounds like, a codec for editing.

The vast majority of complaints people have with FCS -- particularly Compressor, DVDSP or Color -- have to do with user error or the user's ignorance of an optimal workflow. The solution to this is education, which is what these forums are for (learned so much here myself!), so you're in the right place to find help.

From Mike's post:

"The vast majority of complaints people have with FCS -- particularly Compressor, DVDSP or Color -- have to do with user error or the user's ignorance of an optimal workflow. The solution to this is education, which is what these forums are for (learned so much here myself!), so you're in the right place to find help."

Mucho ditto on that point; you'll be amazed at how much better things get when you become an *educated user*. Knowledge is power, my friend, and the more you have the better your life gets.

I've noticed from posts in this forum (plus the original poster of this thread) that a number of Sony and Canon HDV users struggle with compressing their 1080i footage and getting an optimum result. Or even an acceptable result.

As something which might help increase their all-round knowledge of Compressor (in the spirit of what Mike and Robert were just talking about) I noticed recently that Brian Gary, who wrote the "Apple Pro Training Series: Compressor Quick-Reference Guide", has recently put out the first "Apple Pro Video Series" tutorials concerning Compressor.

Apparently, Apple have approved these tutorials for Level One Certification on Compressor 3.5 and you can download these tutorials through iTunes for $39.

The info says, "When you are finished watching the tutorial you can opt to take Apple's online exam with the goal of becoming an Apple Certifed Pro in Compressor 3.5."

The full details are here:

Compressor 3.5 AVPs (http://rippletraining.com/compressor_3_5_apvs.html)

It could be worth checking out. I've already got his "The Art of Encoding Using Compressor" training DVD, but I'll probably pick up this new iTunes one as well.

2 thumbs-up for anything coming out of Brian Gary's head.

thanks guys, and that's why i'm here....to figure out the encrypted jumble of a mess. i'm in no way a beginner to anything computers or the arts. i have my own recording studio where i'm running pro tools 8, i record bands, run sound and foley for films as needed, shoot HD video, and pro photography using the pro line from Canon. i have used adobe's full suite of products including CS4, which i love.

HOWEVER, after using pc's for about 13 years, and nothing else, i recently switched to mac over the summer. i have been trying to figure out FCP for the last couple months. it's not too difficult but adobe was better as far as workflow. sure, there were way too many options in CS4 as well, but...it worked better. there was none of this..... export to a movie, but first, reset your timeline to reflect a 720p, or, try and export your 1920 as a 720p but check the box for progressive first or you will have issues....etc etc etc. there were no hidden areas in CS4...it just worked based on your settings and it always gave great results.

why did i cross over? i have my reasons. i love the mac and the render times are faster. also, my Canon Mark II shoots video in 1920 HD .mov format....the pc has to render all those clips before i can edit! i HATE THAT!!! not so on the mac....my biggest selling point for switching. again, thanks.

currently i'm exporting my HD FCP7 timeline as 720p. i will then take that into compressor and see what happens.

to answer someone's question earlier, all i did with compressor is select the 90 minute best option and only tweak it for CBR7. i think i mentioned that before. the only other thing i did was switch to progressive for scan...i think it was scan...so many settings. or was it frame settings? with CS4 there were also so many settings but you didn't have to or need to tweak these little annoying frame or progressive, etc etc.

i think i will take that compressor course if i am to stay with this.

when i said i shoot in HD, i think i also mentioned it is 1920 rez. not sure what else you would need to know. it is 30p. when i import the footage to FCP7 it asks if i would like to keep the same resultions, etc...i say yes. the timeline then bases itself off what i import. i think i mentioned i shoot with an XHA1 mainly so based on that, you may know what quality i'm getting right out of the cam...timeline...perfect.

here is the bottom line...one would think that taking the timeline and exporting to compressor for DVD would just look great. it doesn't. that is why i have spent hours within days in weeks to figure out the combination of things that need to happen. would be great if it worked really nice with the many settings compressor already as in it.... ie: 90 minute best setting. it doesn't. so now i'm doing another test...export as QT movie from my HD timeline.... apple 720p. there is no apple 422HQ for 720....i'm just using the apple 720p and we'll see what happens. i will stay away from H.264. i still have to read on a good workflow for blu ray. i'm only looking into SD DVD because most clients don't have blu ray.

the video is better, but still a little pixelated. what i'm going to do now is export my 1920 HD timeline as 720. can someone let me know what to choose? what is the difference between:

DVCPRO 720p
apple pro res 720p
HDV 720p

with apple pro res, it exported as 1280X720. i wanted 720X480. i'm hoping that downsizing during file/export/quicktime movie, then importing that QT 720X480 into compressor will be better than exporting the entire HD timeline into compressor.

the quality is good going from HD timeline to compressor but i know it could be better. i am picky but it can be better. video i shot with my non-HD GL2 DV cams looked so much better than what this is doing now.

thanks!

Steve - sounds to me like you are REALLY over complicating your workflow which is causing the bad results.

Here is what you need to do. You need to have your timeline settings IDENTICAL to what you shot as.

Just dragging one of your regular clips into an empty timeline will do this. Assuming your existing work hasn't had any weird changes to it's settings you should be able to copy and paste everything from the existing sequence into this new sequence and see no difference.

Then you can change your compression on your timeline settings to Prores (either Standard or HQ). That's all you need to do.

Your timeline will be unrendered. Render your timeline.

Export a Quicktime with CURRENT SETTINGS chosen.

Don't use export using Quicktime conversion or anything else.

Bring this into compressor, use the best quality DVD settings. Modify these settings to ensure that you are using the Frame Controls (fourth button in), and that the Resize filter is set to Best and that under Encoder (second button in) it is converting as UPPER field order with a 16:9 aspect ratio.

The only real concern I have is the fact that you are shooting as progressive but capturing as interlaced. Unless you were capturing as PsF or something this sounds to me like you would be losing half of your vertical resolution and may be a big source of your problems.

I haven't worked with 30P at all (live in PAL land) but can't you capture as progressive if you are shooting progressive? (In which case you field order would be set to None in both Compressor and Final Cut).

Hi everybody,
Can´t you just use FCP and select File–Send to–Compressor? (After you have rendered all stuff in the final timeline.)
It will start the Compressor and put the video there. Drag a setting and destination to the window and start.

Then your FCP is free to continue with more work while Compressor is encoding in the background. (No need to go through the Export to ...)

Compressor should do the work to downsize from HD to SD etc.

I can also add that it is very important to get the best settings and use Compressor. For instance a few years ago I had problems with footage that zoomed into a flat blue machine panel. The color changed like cloud patterns while zooming due to lack of enough resolution in the color depth. I upgraded all the way from iMovie to Final Cut Express and then to Final Cut Studio and it was not before I found the better workflow here I became satisfied with hard footage like these.

There is no "File>Send To>Compressor". Did you mean "File>Export>Using Compressor" ?

I use this feature a lot, but realize that when you do, FCP can't be used for anything else until Compressor is done compressing. FCP sends one frame at a time to Compressor, that's why you can't keep working in FCP. Now maybe this has changed in FCP7, I don't know as I only have FCP6 right now.

Yes Compressor will do a great job with your HD to SD downconversion, but you MUST turn on the Frames controls and choose settings that will be a good balance between final video quality and render time. If you don't use the Frame controls, you probably won't get good results, especially if you have any graphics in your sequence.

I'll confess, I haven't tried any of the other workflows described here. (using PC only software, etc...) I've been happy with the quality of Compressor for transcoding files.

There IS a File>Send to>Compressor in Final Cut Pro 7. Also there is the 'Share' feature.
You can make up presets in Compressor, and then use the 'Share' button and choose which
Compressor preset to use to compress your movie (there are some presets already made
for you like 'iPod' 'Apple TV' 'Youtube' 'MobileMe' and such, but you can add your own.)
The advantage of this, is that you can go back into FCP and edit while it is compressing your movie,
instead of waiting for FCP to send the movie frame by frame to compressor. If I recall correctly,
this is one of the 'more than 100 improvements' from FCP 6 to FCP7.

File–Send to–Compressor

Mitchell, I should perhaps have mentioned that it came in FCP7 (as Gabe wrote) and it was worth the upgrade itself. I guess it should have been included from the start ...

It is very handy when making DVD projects with plenty of tracks from different FCP sequences and will speed up the workflow.

Don't forget that the Share Option at this point doesn't work with clusters. It's a bug that hopefully get's fixed very soon because now the marketing campaign is very misleading around a feature that could be great if it worked liked advertised.

I SHOOT WITH CANON HV30 AND XHA1. I SHOOT IN 30P...29.97. WHEN I CAPTURE TO THE FCP TIMELINE I CAPTURE VIA TAPE AND SET TO HDV1080i60. T
Steve

Steve: Hey I think the problems starts way back here. Something that is often overlooked is the original frame rate vs where you are sending it. Are you still shooting 30p? Well stop! DVD and Blue Ray do not support 30p at all. What comes out is 24p with a bunch of interlaced frames that become field doubled in the DVD player. So it makes an awful pixelated, flexing (twittering), mess... especially around straight lines. Shoot, edit and export to DVD in 24p or 60i. Leave the 30p to the web videos. Give it a shot and see what happens. Also you may want to turn down your sharpness/detail enhancments in your camera. Most cameras default to unrealistically high edge sharpening out of the box to fool us customers into theinking the cameras and lenses are sharper than they are. Most consumer and pro-sumer cameras use pixel shifting and edge sharpening to get more mathematical resolution out the the CCD/Cmos chips. This process can and often does add garbage to the source video so that when the Compressor or similar program scales the video down, that video garbage can be retained and add unwanted mackie lines and other issues in your final production.

I still think most of your issues is waaaaay back at the beginning because of the 30p aquisition, unless you were meaning you where cpaturing 1080i 60i. if you shoot 24p/f with your cameras, FCP has a setting for 1080i 24p as I remember that is pretty solid when I used a Canon 3 chip last summer.

So I"m a chump for exporting a QT reference movie with current settings and dropping it in DVDSP to encode (with DVDSP usually set to CBR 7.0)? I always had problems trying to encode the video in a DVD friendly format first, it would always tell me in DVDSP that the file I was trying to import wasn't legal, or some such. Probabaly cause I used FCP to encode the DVD-friendly files in a bad format or something.

Anyway, for what it's worth, I've been screwing with compressor the last few days trying to prepare an SD movie for transfer to HD Tape. I did a buttload of tests and used compressor to uprez it to 1920x1080 from plain old 720x480 anamorphic. Here was my workflow. . .

FCP timeline is 720x480 anamorphic, interlaced/60i, just like my footage. Export QT reference movie with current settings, drop into compressor. Encode with the HD 1080/60i setting, modifying a few things like frame controls for "Best" resizing. This one's REALLY important. I did little tests and the quality difference between best and better is noticeable.

I do the same thing for DVDs, except bypass compressor. So I export a QT reference movie with current settings (from a timeline that exactly matches my original footage settings) and drop the ref movie in DVDSP, letting it do the video encoding. I made a separate audio AC3 file in compressor. Looks just fine to me. Maybe next time I'll try compressor for the DVD video files. . .maybe it'll make my fades up from black look less funky?

Steve - sounds to me like you are REALLY over complicating your workflow which is causing the bad results.

Here is what you need to do. You need to have your timeline settings IDENTICAL to what you shot as.

Just dragging one of your regular clips into an empty timeline will do this. Assuming your existing work hasn't had any weird changes to it's settings you should be able to copy and paste everything from the existing sequence into this new sequence and see no difference.

Then you can change your compression on your timeline settings to Prores (either Standard or HQ). That's all you need to do.

Your timeline will be unrendered. Render your timeline.

Export a Quicktime with CURRENT SETTINGS chosen.

Don't use export using Quicktime conversion or anything else.

Bring this into compressor, use the best quality DVD settings. Modify these settings to ensure that you are using the Frame Controls (fourth button in), and that the Resize filter is set to Best and that under Encoder (second button in) it is converting as UPPER field order with a 16:9 aspect ratio.

The only real concern I have is the fact that you are shooting as progressive but capturing as interlaced. Unless you were capturing as PsF or something this sounds to me like you would be losing half of your vertical resolution and may be a big source of your problems.

I haven't worked with 30P at all (live in PAL land) but can't you capture as progressive if you are shooting progressive? (In which case you field order would be set to None in both Compressor and Final Cut).

Craig, thank you for this workflow! I have been MIA for a short bit. I was overcomplicating it. that's easy to do when you're inundated with hundreds of settings. I will export using Quicktime conversion only when I want to make an H.264 file for blu ray.

For my SD workflow, I shoot in HD always...1920 30p and will be capturing in pro res 422 into a pro res 422 timeline and doing file / export / quicktime movie. with that mpeg2 qt movie i just put it into IDVD and it looks great. i bypass compressor. things look great. i really stressed myself out and had to step away after the few weeks of constant brain meltdowns i was having. hehe. thanks so much to everyone!

Shoot, edit and export to DVD in 24p or 60i. Leave the 30p to the web videos. Give it a shot and see what happens.

Alex, thanks for this as well. i am still shooting in 30p but will stop and see what happens. i like the framerate look as opposed to 60i. 60i has the look of old school video cameras, like at a kids bday party, know what i mean? i enjoy the progressive look. i guess i could do 24p to get that, but then won't it be even more jittery when panning?

yes, i was filming in 30p and capturing in 60i (that's what a couple people using fcp told me to do and i have stopped.) from now on i will film, edit and export in the same rate. i will be setting my timeline to pro res 422 or HDV. i heard pro res 422 is the better approach.

thanks to everyone
Steve

If I switch to 60i (even though I hate that smooth look), should I capture in HDV 1080 60i, or pro res 422? thoughts?

Depends on what you're going to do with it.

If you're just documenting something and the video is going to go straight to DVD or the web, without and post processing (color grading, chroma key, etc..) I think HDV looks pretty darn good. I use it all the time with our Sony EX3 (1080 60i SQ).

The problem with HDV is that it doesn't hold up that well when you "push it hard". Just keep that in mind and you'll be fine.