DVD Studio/Compressor?

David Knaggs · July 3rd, 2007, 06:53 AM

No, it's not unusual (to paraphrase Tom Jones). You chose "Best", which is 2-pass, over "Fastest", which is single pass.

It depends on quality trade-off versus deadline.

If you want faster, you might try single-pass or iDVD or trying to get DVD SP to do the encoding (from a Quicktime reference movie), but I'm not sure if DVD SP is faster or slower than Compressor.

The good news is that the asset encoding is the long part. Once you have encoded your .m2v and .ac3 assets, the authoring, building and formatting in DVD SP can be really quick. It only took me about 10-15 minutes to do one in DVD SP this morning (after leaving Compressor on overnight to encode the .m2v and .ac3). Although DVD SP can take a bit longer if you put a short movie in the menu and you leave it to DVD SP to encode it.

David Scattergood · July 3rd, 2007, 07:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Knaggs

No, it's not unusual (to paraphrase Tom Jones). You chose "Best", which is 2-pass, over "Fastest", which is single pass.

It depends on quality trade-off versus deadline.

If you want faster, you might try single-pass or iDVD or trying to get DVD SP to do the encoding (from a Quicktime reference movie), but I'm not sure if DVD SP is faster or slower than Compressor.

The good news is that the asset encoding is the long part. Once you have encoded your .m2v and .ac3 assets, the authoring, building and formatting in DVD SP can be really quick. It only took me about 10-15 minutes to do one in DVD SP this morning (after leaving Compressor on overnight to encode the .m2v and .ac3). Although DVD SP can take a bit longer if you put a short movie in the menu and you leave it to DVD SP to encode it.

That's good news....however, not sure what I've done here but from DVDSP I've 'added +' the file/s from the new compressor folder (.m2v and .ac3) but it only seems to import the video. Swapped this vid file over the current QT ref file (which I had already there in SP) and for some reason it plays as if zoomed in...and of course the audio is absent also.
One thing I noticed about DVDSP is you cannot appear highlight what you are selecting?
Have just played the m2v vid file in the view and it now looks ok, but I assume I have to somehow drag in the audio (and place them both together on the 'track')?

EDIT - I've dragged the .ac3 file in via add audio instead - with the QT file this was embedded within the file itself...sorry it sounds like I'm losing it here! I'd normally have a good read around and trial and error but time is passing!!

Cheers.

David Scattergood · July 3rd, 2007, 07:33 AM

...one more time...honest...

The difference in quality between QT ref file in DVDSP and the Compressor imported m2v and ac3 files is huge. Might this be because DVDSP has yet to compress the QT ref file? It's almost day and night...really.

I was slightly worried that having two seperate files for video and audio might introduce synching issues...but that seems, on the 'simulate' function good so far.

Cheers.

David Scattergood · July 3rd, 2007, 11:04 AM

Thanks David - I succesfully exported the ac3 & m2v files, slotted them into DVDSP project (into a track), built and formatted and tested on the TV DVD player - works fine....on really critical, close inspection there are a couple of things I wasn't entirely happy with but not noticeable under normal viewing I suspect.
Left the bit rate dials as they were but will experiment (more so when I start running HDV). Not sure if there are any further encoding to be carried out...I was reading a couple threads re HDV timelines to SD DVD - couldn't find a thread (I think I may have bookmarked one of your HDV-Compressor workarounds, bearing in mind I'm 25p and do not have a higher end mac pro).
But I'll come to that when I grab some HDV.
Thanks - another milestone passes by!!

Going back to compressor, in inspector there is an option set for 'native lower field dominance'...this somewhat confuses me as the imported footage is progressive...? Leave it as it is, or change this to progressive?

Huge thanks.

David Knaggs · July 3rd, 2007, 04:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Scattergood

Going back to compressor, in inspector there is an option set for 'native lower field dominance'...this somewhat confuses me as the imported footage is progressive...? Leave it as it is, or change this to progressive?

That's great news that it all went well.

In answer to your question, page 132 of the compressor manual says:

"Field Dominance pop-up menu: Choose whether the top field or the bottom field of your interlaced source media file will be the dominant (first) field in the output MPEG-2 video file. If you choose Automatic (the default), Compressor analyzes the source video and attempts to determine field dominance automatically. Bottom field is dominant for DV source video. This setting pertains only to interlaced video output formats, not 720p."

If you shot in 576p25, your camera should have compressed it with the DV codec. If you shot with 576p50, then the camera should have compressed it with the HDV codec.

I'll assume that you shot it in 576p25 (DV codec) and that your sequence in FCP was also DV PAL. So it shouldn't hurt to leave it on lower (or bottom). But it probably wouldn't hurt to have set it to Progressive (or even Automatic), as a guess.

David Scattergood · July 4th, 2007, 05:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Knaggs

That's great news that it all went well.

In answer to your question, page 132 of the compressor manual says:

"Field Dominance pop-up menu: Choose whether the top field or the bottom field of your interlaced source media file will be the dominant (first) field in the output MPEG-2 video file. If you choose Automatic (the default), Compressor analyzes the source video and attempts to determine field dominance automatically. Bottom field is dominant for DV source video. This setting pertains only to interlaced video output formats, not 720p."

If you shot in 576p25, your camera should have compressed it with the DV codec. If you shot with 576p50, then the camera should have compressed it with the HDV codec.

I'll assume that you shot it in 576p25 (DV codec) and that your sequence in FCP was also DV PAL. So it shouldn't hurt to leave it on lower (or bottom). But it probably wouldn't hurt to have set it to Progressive (or even Automatic), as a guess.

Aye - spotted that quickly in the manual but my brain was doing somersaults yesterday. It's the fact that I shot in 576p25 then was asked which field I required as dominant - I presumed this related to interlaced video only...?
I checked the settings within the FCP project and the lower field was set as dominant - so this is what I used (though was tempted to switch it to progressive).
576p50 - is the SD HDV50 format? Have you ever used this aside from slow motion for 720p50. I've almost neglected this format on the HD100 but as I've recently been shooting 576p25 then I guess the quality of the 50 would be around the same.
Anyhow - all 5 have been compressed (I left one over night - ran in sleep mode which was handy...the missus wasn't too happy with the ultra bright iMac screen blazing out!). I have to add these to the DVDSP projects then build/format and deliver later this afternoon...I think I'm just about going to pull this one off!
Thanks for you guidance on this fella.

July 3rd, 2007, 06:53 AM	#31
David Knaggs Major Player Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 826	No, it's not unusual (to paraphrase Tom Jones). You chose "Best", which is 2-pass, over "Fastest", which is single pass. It depends on quality trade-off versus deadline. If you want faster, you might try single-pass or iDVD or trying to get DVD SP to do the encoding (from a Quicktime reference movie), but I'm not sure if DVD SP is faster or slower than Compressor. The good news is that the asset encoding is the long part. Once you have encoded your .m2v and .ac3 assets, the authoring, building and formatting in DVD SP can be really quick. It only took me about 10-15 minutes to do one in DVD SP this morning (after leaving Compressor on overnight to encode the .m2v and .ac3). Although DVD SP can take a bit longer if you put a short movie in the menu and you leave it to DVD SP to encode it.

July 3rd, 2007, 07:33 AM	#33
David Scattergood Major Player Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Manchester, UK Posts: 755	...one more time...honest... The difference in quality between QT ref file in DVDSP and the Compressor imported m2v and ac3 files is huge. Might this be because DVDSP has yet to compress the QT ref file? It's almost day and night...really. I was slightly worried that having two seperate files for video and audio might introduce synching issues...but that seems, on the 'simulate' function good so far. Cheers.

July 3rd, 2007, 11:04 AM	#34
David Scattergood Major Player Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Manchester, UK Posts: 755	Thanks David - I succesfully exported the ac3 & m2v files, slotted them into DVDSP project (into a track), built and formatted and tested on the TV DVD player - works fine....on really critical, close inspection there are a couple of things I wasn't entirely happy with but not noticeable under normal viewing I suspect. Left the bit rate dials as they were but will experiment (more so when I start running HDV). Not sure if there are any further encoding to be carried out...I was reading a couple threads re HDV timelines to SD DVD - couldn't find a thread (I think I may have bookmarked one of your HDV-Compressor workarounds, bearing in mind I'm 25p and do not have a higher end mac pro). But I'll come to that when I grab some HDV. Thanks - another milestone passes by!! Going back to compressor, in inspector there is an option set for 'native lower field dominance'...this somewhat confuses me as the imported footage is progressive...? Leave it as it is, or change this to progressive? Huge thanks.