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-   -   Final cut pro vs. Compressor (https://www.dvinfo.net/forum/final-cut-suite/139814-final-cut-pro-vs-compressor.html)

Mitchell Lewis December 16th, 2009 08:14 AM
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.

Gabe Strong December 16th, 2009 10:46 AM
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.

Johan Forssblad December 16th, 2009 01:51 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Johan Forssblad (Post 1460852)
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.

Mathieu Ghekiere December 22nd, 2009 01:19 PM
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.

Alex Humphrey December 30th, 2009 06:09 PM
I think it's the 30p is the real problem.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Rotter (Post 1449033)
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.

Josh Bass December 31st, 2009 01:37 AM
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 Rotter January 5th, 2010 02:49 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Craig Parkes (Post 1451955)
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!

Steve Rotter January 5th, 2010 02:54 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex Humphrey (Post 1466293)
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

Steve Rotter January 7th, 2010 11:09 PM
If I switch to 60i (even though I hate that smooth look), should I capture in HDV 1080 60i, or pro res 422? thoughts?

Mitchell Lewis January 7th, 2010 11:25 PM
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.

Steve Rotter January 9th, 2010 12:00 PM
Mitchell, thanks. I'm starting a new project now that was shot with a Canon XH A1 at 30p. I set final cut to be HDV30p across the board, and capture settings being HDV. we'll see what happens. I did initially have it set to HDV30p with capture settings set to apple pro res 422 but this made my capture window look different....there were no options, just a screen showing me what is being captured.

Not sure if there will be a difference setting the capture codec to HDV vs. apple pro res 422.

If I did set the capture to apple pro res 422 with a timeline of HDV30p, wouldn't that cause issues? I would have to render the entire timeline to allow for the apple pro res 422 on a HDV 30p timeline?

Is this the golden rule?.... make it all HDV30p across the board OR apple pro res 30p across the board?

thanks!
steve

Mitchell Lewis January 9th, 2010 12:11 PM
Honestly I've never captured as Pro Res.....sorry.

I would recommend capturing as HDV30p, but here's the important part.....create a new sequence and go to Modify>Sequence Settings. Go the Render tab and change the render from Same As Source to ProRes. That way, when ever FCP needs to render (graphics, multilayer video, etc...) it will render as ProRes. Slightly better quality, but more importantly rendering seems more consistent and dependable.

The challenge is to remember to do this every time you create a new sequence.

Steve Rotter January 9th, 2010 12:57 PM
thanks for that tip....i am about 45 mins into a capture and it's set to same as timeline...damn. oh well, next time.

steve


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