FCP video quality.
 

We have imported HDV video into FCP as HDV, edited it and rendered it out using Compressor as a .m2v file with an average bit rate of 5.5. The video is right around 2 hours long and I'm noticing some quality issues. When you look closely at the video on a tv, you can see some slight blocking issues. This isn't really like macroblocking when there is a compression issue, but I can't really explain the look any better. Does this make any sense at all?

Thanks,

Chad

A picture is worth a thousand words. Post a screen grab

2 ideas for you ...

Have you tried a different codec.

Are you 100% sure that the original does not have the problem. You say when you look at it on TV is shows this blocking, have you looked at the original footage on the TV to see if anything is there before any editing.

I'm still trying to get this working. I've captured the video as HDV 1080 60i, edited it and it looks great in FCP. When I export to compressor and choose one of the MPEG/DVD formats, no matter what the bit rate, it still looks bad. When I look at the Preview monitor in Compressor, the left side of the frame looks great, but the right side is jagged. It looks like every other line is offset. Any ideas on how to fix this? I have some deadlines creeping up.

Thanks,

Chad

Chad,

HDV has always been tricky getting good encodes for DVD; if you really want to nail it and, understand exactly how settings affect your encodes the best thing to do is pick up this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Apple-Pro-Trai...2076646&sr=8-1

I have had pretty much the exact opposite experience working with HDV and FCS2 and haven't found it tricky at all. I work with 60i HDV day in and day out and have had terrific, consistent results making DVDs with Compressor. Without the benefit of any additional reading material.

There are more than a few variables along the way that you have to look at and eliminate to get to the heart of it. What are your actual sequence settings? Which specific Compressor presets are you actually using? Which version of FCP are you using? And if you really want to illustrate your problem, why not post a screen grab?

Chad-

Here is a good option and an overall excellent website for FCP/FCS operators:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage...to_sd_dvd.html

good luck

Eric,

That link seemed pretty helpful. I'm converting now. We will see how it goes.
I've got a total of 3 weddings in HDV already on the computer. I'm going to see if I can fix them and start capturing the new ones in ProRes.

Thanks,

Chad