Best compression rate - help - i'm still green

Help. Can any give me an estimate for what would be a good encoding rate for a footage with a lot of movement but yet only 6 minutes.
Thanks

Is it only the portions that have been transcoded from DVD that are strobing? You have to figure that since your source DVD has been compressed to fit onto the original DVD, and the fact that DV video is already compressed 5-1, and then you are compressing it again to fit on your own DVD, there are going to be issues.
If it was me, I'd find out if I could get hold of the original tapes and recapture. Or, failing that, get hold of the original edited files. Any way you can cut out some of these compressions will only help your cause.
How did you 'pull the video' from your client's DVD? What software did you use? Every time I've done this, the result has been less than stellar. But I didn't have any strobing. This is perhaps because the DVDs I've taken footage from were generated from those DVD camcorders and bypassed some of that compression.
I do an awful lot of videos authored to DVD, which include elements from everywhere under the sun. I get digital stills, consumer MiniDV tapes, camcorder-generated DVDs, scanned photos and professionally-done MiniDV footage. And it's usually of people playing sports. Plus I add transitions like classic dissolves and such. After many tests on my system, I've come to a few conclusions:
Number one—CBR 6.7 (in DVDSP) gives me the best overall result for achieving decent motion AND decent dissolves. 2-pass schemes end up giving my dissolves a ratty look and end up making the whole video look cheesey. If you're not happy with that in your own tests, try upping the bitrate some, but I'm convinced that CBR is best for my needs 99% of the time.
Number two—I only use Maxell-R or RiData-R DVDs.
Number three—When it really counts, I burn my DVDs from a disk image in Toast as Data and on the UDF setting. And I burn it at 4x speed.
Others may debate me on a few of these, but these are the conclusions I've come to on my system, with my software. I generate hundreds of DVDs at a time and are played on every system imaginable. I rarely get one back as 'unplayable.' In fact, It's only happened once in the past year. And in that one case, it had been burned at 12x speed. Once I replaced it with the same file burned at 4x, it played fine.
Also, you read a lot of folks talking about only doing your encoding to MPEG2 through Compressor. I don't notice enough quality difference to justify the outrageous amount of time Compressor takes to encode an MPEG2 file. And, in some of my tests, DVDSP did a BETTER job.
I create the audio file in Compressor (AAC), and then replace the AIFF audio file DVDSP creates with it before dragging the audio and video into DVDSP's Graphical Menu.
I hope some of this helps you. I've learned these lessons through an awful lot of "stomach pain." I've read a lot of advice in this forum and tested it on my own system on my own projects. Your results, as they say, may vary.

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Best compression rate in quicktime for broadcast

HI -
Haven't done an export for broadcast in a while. Looking the best codec to export to from FCP? Thanks

This is a loaded question. What does the network ask for? If it is HD Cam SR then provide a transfer post house working with Final Cut with a Pro Rez file. If it is Digi Beta then 8-bit uncompressed or Pro Rez will do.
Good Luck
Z1

Need help with compression rates with Sorenson Squeeze 6, Compressor3.5.2

Hopefully somebody can help me with this...
I am running Sorenson Squeeze 6 on a Mac to try and compress some Apple ProRes 422 videos into an MPEG-2 file. The file will be played in a DirectX application, running on a PC with Windows 7. When being played it looks to be heavily compressed, and I need help with some of the compression settings.
Let me get more into detail...
So I have received a Quicktime .mov that has been encoded with FCP using Apple ProRes 422 compression at 720x486 , 29.97 fps, 40.29 Mbit/s , and the file size is 515.7mb.
So, this is the type of file I will have to compress into an MPEG-2, that will be playing on a...
1.6 GHz Intel Atom 330 Dual Core
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M Graphics
1Gb DDR2 800 Ram
32Gb SATA Solid State Drive
Windows 7 Home
Here is what I have done so far on my Mac using Sorenson Squeeze 6 :
I have brought the original file in and created some presets.
First off, I am encoding these MPEG-2 videos using an elementary stream type so I can mux the files using MPEG Streamclip...
Here is a screenshot of the settings I am using in Sorenson :
- I have changed many of the data rate settings as low as 3000 Kbps, and as high as 15,000 Kbps, and the end result looks essentially the same
- The audio isn't a problem, so I'm not going to address that.
- I have used the crop/deinterlace filter and also not used the filter, and it makes a big difference, so obviously it needs to be deinterlaced.
From there I will get the .m2v file and the .m2a file, and then mux those with MPEG Streamclip.
So, I have done 8 different Pre-sets all with various settings playing primarily with the data rate, and the method from 2-pass vbr all the way to 1-pass cbr.
So again, my end result that is playing back on the windows 7 box (the specs that are listed above) looks to be heavily compressed and pixelation occurs.
- I have also done the exact same with Apple's Compressor, and have gotten better results muxing while compressing, however the end result still tends to be the same, however the end result is much better. I have gone through 8 or so different compression export settings, and just overall still have the same issue.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Crawford and Luke
LKC Creative, LLC.
[email protected]

You are using a custom layout so my directions don't make any sense...
For the future, you can set this up in DVD SP's Preferences:
Using the Standard window layout the things to play with would be like the screenshot below:

Zero quality loss compression rates

Hi. This my first post. Thanks to all who have posted so far, very helpful. My goal is to get away from DVD storage for home movies entirely, so I need to compress my .avi files to a reasonable size. I refuse to do so at the expense of quality, however. After a dozen experiments in QT, I determined that from my Sony Handicam, the following settings retained full clarity:
h.264, 29.97frames/s, 5700kb/s, best quality, 640X480.
The end result for a 54 second clip was an .mp4 file roughly 1/5 of the size of the .avi (188MB down to 38MB). Has anyone achieved a better compression rate without quality loss? I want to ensure the best rate before I set to converting hours of home video. Any suggestions appreciated.
Message was edited by: Dirk The Hammer

Patrick, thanks so much for your help. You're all really helpful on here!
Exporting in prores still displays artifacts and they show up when I bring it into FCP (regardless of whether I import the clip fresh or have it saved back from a "send").
Here's what I tried:
importing clip directly into a new motion file (not sent from FCP) - movie displays with artifacting - upon rendering, rendered clip still has issue - imported into FCP - still shows artifacting
by importing the motion clip with artifacts into FCP and display in the timeline, FCP changes it's settings to match the clip as usual - I then tried importing the original source clip directly into FCP and when I move it to the timeline, it also shows identical artifacts. However, if I bring in the original clip first, so FCP changes it's settings to match it, the motion clip still shows compression.
Assuming the problem is with the transcode, is this just an issue with this video format working with motion? If so, I assume this means our video team needs to use a different codec. We're shooting a lot of green screen for HD video - any recommendations for a better codec?
Also, is this an issue that Apple can address with future versions of Motion?
Thanks again!

Best Compression Settings

I have only 30 minutes Video, What is the best compression setting in compressor 2?
I selected 90 Minutes Best, that gives me these:
average Bit Rate 6.2 Mbps
maximum bit rate 7.7
2pass VBR Best which I can not use, because it gave me problems in the past. I heard that Compressor 3 fixed the problem.
With these setting I still can see pixalations in the fast motion.
Will increase Bit Rates (What is the max)improve the quality?
Thanks,

Hi
Will increase Bit Rates (What is the max) improve the quality?
You'll get playback problems in most stand alone players going over that numbers.
For a 30 min project you can try changing the standard 90 min preset from VBR to CBR:
Take a ahort part of your movie with fast movements/transitions and check if it gives you good results.
Remember encoding your audio to Dolby 2 (AC3).
Hope that helps !
Alberto

Best compression setting 90min movie on Dual Layer DVD

Okay, I admit, I am a total n00b at this...so sorry if you have to break things down into the most basic terms...
I am trying to get the BEST quality I can for my adobe Encore project (for ease of calculation, 90min movie and added features). I was previously getting "exceeds dvd capacity" error in Encore.
I have decided to recompress and see what I can do to make it all fit, but first I want to re-evaluate my whole process...
the ultimate issue comes down to three things (i think)...
1. CBR v VBR?? what is better and why?
2. What Data Bit Rate to compress at and why?
3. Single layer DVD vs Dual Layer DVD? Which is better and why?
to begin the discussion, I'll tell you what I "know" and what I think.
It seems DVD players can only handle a max bit rate of 8mbps so I don't want to go over that and using a Dual layer disc I risk that it may not work on older players....also, the dual layer costs twice as much to duplicate (this sucks but money is not an issue at this point, quality is more important). From what I have read, constant Bit Rate @ 8mbps will give me the Best possible image... 8 is the max and so to encode at 8 the entire time should be the best.. will i have any issues with this? This is not an amateur home movie but rather an indie feature film so I want to get the best possible viewable product out to people. I will have blu-ray questions to come later (thats what we are going to send to festivals).
any help would be greatly appreciated
thanks so much...
chris

Okay, thanks for everyone's thoughts.
Question....
I totally understand not wanting to waste space on a dvd IF there was extra room.... HOWEVER, a movie at 90min with menus, etc. BARELY fits on a dvd at a 6.8mbps VBR compression rate....
therefore....why not just fork out the extra couple bucks and just compress the whole thing at 8.0mbps 2pass CBR, slap it on a dual layer and even though there will be parts of the movie that will be higher than necessary, and there will be leftover space on the dual layer dvd.... you will be guaranteed to have the highest quality right? heavy motion areas and more static areas will all be encoded at 8 and thus, the best....
am i wrong in thinking this?
and after some extensive reading and research....Although is says a dvd player can handle 9.8mbps..... it doesnt' seem safe to encode that high because a lot of players can't handle it.... what is everyone else's thoughts?
I found this:
Data rate
DVD-Video discs have a raw bitrate of 11.08 Mbit/s, with a 1.0 Mbit/s overhead, leaving a payload bitrate of 10.08 Mbit/s. Of this, up to 3.36 Mbit/s can be used for subtitles and a maximum of 9.80 Mbit/s can be split amongst audio and video. In the case of multiple angles the data is stored interleaved, and so there's a bitrate penalty leading to a max bitrate of 8 Mbit/s per angle to compensate for additional seek time. This limit is not cumulative, so each additional angle can still have up to 8 Mbit/s of bitrate available.
Professionally encoded videos average a bitrate of 4-5 Mbit/s with a maximum of 7–8 Mbit/s in high-action scenes. This is typically done to allow greater compatibility amongst players, and to help prevent buffer underruns in the case of dirty or scratched discs.

Best compression for video with a lot of static text and graphics

Hello! I am producing an instructional DVD and am getting ready to output the files and was wondering what the best compression format would be for me to use.
About 1/3 of the clips consist of video shot in SD with very little movement (guy sitting at a desk talking to the camera.) The rest contains graphics created in After Effects and then imported back into Final Cut. The graphics are primarily text based, and don't change too often. There are some still images as well, but they are static for the most part save for some occasional panning. Oh, and the total length of all the video clips is about 70 minutes.
I would like to compress these videos so as to get the best possible quality in the text. I did a few tests, but the quality in the letters seemed a little worse than I had hoped. Is this just going to be an inevitability I have to live with, or is there a particular setting that would help me out?
Thanks for reading this; any help would be greatly appreciated!
PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.7) 1.25 GB DDR SDRAM

You know--I really have no idea why I didn't do it that way. I exported uncompressed files from After Effects and then imported them into FCP; some of the files are huuuge, like 60 GB+
I think in the next version of this I will probably just edit in FCP then import it into AE, and then export from there. As it stands though, I've sort of made some changes and done stuff in FCP after importing the clips, so I'd like to just export using Compressor.
So are you saying it's better to export uncompressed from FCP and then import that into Compressor and go from there? I've been just selecting the 'Export Using Compressor' option in FCP and going from there...
Thanks!

BEST COMPRESSION FOR DVD

HI,
I want to find out the BEST compression setting for a FCP project that is 1hr and 41min. I'm burning it to a DVD that is 120min long. It's NOT HD. And it's going to be shown on a wall when it's finished. What are the best settings for this?
Thank you for your help.
Andy

#42 - Quick and dirty way to author a DVD
Shane's Stock Answer #42 - David Roth Weiss' Secret Quick and Dirty Way to Author a DVD:
The absolute simplest way to make a DVD using FCP and DVDSP is as follows:
1. Export a QT movie, either a reference file or self contained using current settings.
2. Open DVDSP, select the "graphical" tab and you will see two little monitors, one blue, one green.
3. Select the left blue one and hit delete.
4. Now, select the green one, right click on it and select the top option "first play".
5. Now drag your QT from the browser and drop it on top of the green monitor.
6. Now, for a DVD from an HD source, look to the right side and select the "general tab" in the track editor, and see the Display Mode, and select "16:9 pan-scan."
7. Hit the little black and yellow burn icon at the top of the page and put a a DVD in when prompted. DVDSP will encode and burn your new DVD.
THATS ALL!!!
NOW...if you want a GOOD LOOKING DVD, instead of taking your REF movie into DVD SP, instead take it into Compressor and choose the BEST QUALITY ENCODE (2 pass VBR) that matches your show timing. Then take THAT result into DVD SP and follow the rest of the steps. Except you can choose "16:9 LETTERBOX" instead of PAN & SCAN if you want to see the entire image.

Best Data Rate for Export to DVD as Quicktime Movie

Hello - hope someone out there can help me!!!
I put together a slideshow for my high school reunion using iMovie HD 5.0.2 and need help with settings exporting it as a Quicktime movie.
*I want to export it to a DVD* so that I can play it on a friend's laptop and I'm not sure if iDVD would be the way to go - my friend has a Macbook Pro I can borrow so it might be okay - I am worried about the fact that I've been working on older software. (I have read about opening iDVD and bringing in iMovie project vs. "share to iDVD"). So they suggested instead of iDVD I just export as a quicktime. Then I can burn it in Toast (v.6.0.2)
Wondering about *BEST DATA RATE?*
In export settings I have:
compressor set at H.264
frame rate: current (should that be DV-NTSC?)
key frames: automatic (?)
encoding: best quality/multi-pass
should data rate be automatic?
Some details that might be relevant to helping me:
*Stills brought in as clips with cross-dissolves, only two uses of "Ken Burns effect"
*Some stills were in the project from my LAST reunion - I realize I should have reimported all the stills since I am now recompressing them, but it's too late now!
*no audio
*Slideshow is about 45 mins long, file size says 5.52GB although when I looked into exporting it last night it said 9+GB - not sure why
*Using a G4 Tower (not my ancient laptop) with OS 10.4.11, Dual 533MHz PowerPC, 1.5GB SDRAM
iDVD version is 6.0.4
please help if you can!! thank you in advance...

Are you trying to burn a standard DVD or are you trying to put a QuickTime .mov file on DVD media?
A standard DVD doesn't worry about file size (only the duration).
A "data" DVD is limited to the type of media used. A single layer DVD is about 3.7 GB's.
In order to make a data DVD you need to keep the data rate low enough to not exceed the DVD media playback abilities. They can't handle the higher rates found in many of the preset options.
You can avoid all of these headaches by telling the viewer to "copy" the .mov file from the DVD to their Desktop. Then nearly any of the presets option will work.
H.264 is a great video codec and the "automatic" preset should work just fine. Use "multi-pass" for best quality (takes a very long time). Remove the check mark for "Audio" since your file has none. Leave it checked and you waste file size because a silent audio track would be added.

The best Bit rate for a 1 hour film

Hi all
Just a quick question does anyone know the best bit rate to use to compress a 1 hour film. I want the best quality possible
Any advice would be gratfully recieved
Thanks

If you're using Compressor and it's a one hour encode then use the CBR setting with a bit rate of 6 or 6.5. Also encode your audio to the industry standard .ac3 file format. The combination of audio and video bitrate is always a compromise between quality and having consumer DVD players stalling or choking because the combined birate is too high.
However, the media content you're encoding will always determine how you should encode: video with lots of fast action needs the VBR setting, whereas the CBR setting can be used when there is little action. But generally, the CBR setting in Compressor will do an okay job with project durations of one hour or less, regardless of the action in your video.
Hope this helps.
- Don

What is the best compression scheme?

Material shot on HD, downconverted to DV, edited in FCP and now I want to put in onto a DVD. About an hour of material.
What is the best compression scheme? So far testing seems to be export as 10 bit uncompressed and let DVD SP compress it but it's still not great. Lots of compression artifacts in the dark backgrounds.

Also place compression markers at those points in your presentation, where you have sudden scene changes but not because you made an edit at that point. FCP automatically places compression markers at edit points during the edit process in FCP. Then when you export out of FCP, be sure to use the DVD SP Markers export option, (Export as Quicktime Movie) this will then include any compression and chapter markers you've placed in FCP, which will be used by Compressor, during the encoding process to the .m2v file, which helps avoid artifacting on sudden scene changes.
The chapter markers will then be embeded in the .m2v file and used by DVD SP when imported. Personally, I use BitVice, (as my m2v encoder) but compressor works well as well.

Best compression for MOTION file with lots of graphics

Hi,
Does anyone know the best setting to compress Motion's file into mpeg2 for dvdsp4? I had setted mine to 7.5 constant bit rate, & the frame control as best with IP 6GOP but I still see lots of pixal break when viewing in dvdsp.
any suggestion?
thanks,
JP

Hey JPNG
the answer to you encoding from either sonic's encoder or srpuce's MPX3000 is an undoubted YES YES YES
if you have these hardware encoders available to you, by all means DO IT/___sbsstatic___/migration-images/migration-img-not-avail.png
i actually use Spruce's encoder all the time, have it networked with my mac and encode a lot of content this way.
as far as compatibilty issues, they are NON-EXISTENT/___sbsstatic___/migration-images/migration-img-not-avail.png
oh man, you said the magic word, you just opened up the true power of DVDSP without having to worry about encoding in the background/___sbsstatic___/migration-images/migration-img-not-avail.png
good luck
Mikey M.

Compression rates out of date

Hello,
We did an Online Backup in our system. The backup was a success with message:
BR0053I BRBACKUP completed successfully with warnings
Since there is a warning, i checked the log and found out about this message:
BR0083W Compression rates out of date - run BRBACKUP with option '-k only
i want to know how to correct this and what was the cause of the error?
Thanks and regards,
Gelyne'

Hi Siddhesh,
Eventhough the warning can be ignored, still i need to eliminate the warnings present in my logs. Actually, i executed the ffg to update the compression rate of the server:
brbackup -u / -t online -k only -c
Unfortunately, during the process, there's an error again that occured:
#FILE..... /oracle/EQ0/sapdata2/sr3_7/sr3.data7 4.9887:1 420379201
BR0280I BRBACKUP time stamp: 2007-02-03 22.44.30
BR0063I 34 of 42 files processed - 73240.266 MB of 87249.773 MB done
BR0204I Percentage done: 83.94%, estimated end time: 23:50
BR0001I ******************************************________
BR0201I Compressing /oracle/EQ0/origlogA/cntrl/cntrlEQ0.dbf
BR0278E Command output of 'LANG=C compress -c /oracle/EQ0/origlogA/cntrl/cntrlEQ0.dbf | /usr/sap/EQ0/SYS/exe/run/brtools -f getcompr -':/oracle/EQ0/origlogA/cntrl/cntrlEQ0.dbf: Invalid argument
BR0280I BRBACKUP time stamp: 2007-02-03 22.44.30
BR0279E Return code from 'LANG=C compress -c /oracle/EQ0/origlogA/cntrl/cntrlEQ0.dbf | /usr/sap/EQ0/SYS/exe/run/brtools -f getcompr -': 5
BR0224E Compressing /oracle/EQ0/origlogA/cntrl/cntrlEQ0.dbf to BRTOOLS failed due to previous errors
BR0115I Compression rate for all files 4.7555:1
BR0056I End of database backup: bdunmzdh.cmb 2007-02-03 23.09.19
BR0280I BRBACKUP time stamp: 2007-02-03 23.09.20
BR0054I BRBACKUP terminated with errors
Please help.
Thanks and regards,
Gelyne

What's the best compression setting for exporting video to DVD?

My QT self contained file from FCP is 13 GB (1:02 min long) when I use DV NTSC while exporting. When iDVD finished encoding it, it went down to 3.4 GB (that includes video files in my iDVD menus).
*Since the DVD media is 4.7 GB can I make better quality DVD by lessening compression while exporting from FCP?*
I don't think there is a way to tweak compression in iDVD. And my second question:
*Is "self contained" file better quality than just a reference file?*
*I would like to make the best possible quality DVD and am looking for some tips on what settings would help me achieve it.*

Hi Joby,
Compressor is what you need.
Import your file, choose DVD best quality 90 minutes from the settings tab (lower left window in Compressor). This will allow your movie to be converted as MPEG 2 and ac3 dolby stereo (best compression for DVD audio).
The inspector window (lower right window) will allow you to decide/arrange settings as you like.
If you are not sure about best bit rate choice use the [Bit Budget|http://www.kenstone.net/fcphomepage/bitbudget.html]
As you can see the inspector window offers a range of customizable settings if you are not familiar with those the manual (main menu>help>user manual) will answer all your questions. Simply type a word or definition in the search area and most likely the manual will provide the info you seek.
Self contained means that you create a file with exact copies from your original frames and edit on the timeline, a self-contained file becomes independent from your timeline. A reference movie as the definition says totally refers to your FCP project and wouldn't work on a different machine without referenced media files.
There is no difference in quality between the two QTmovie options.
Hope that helps
G.
PS. Extra info about Compressor and h the best way to create your DVD [here|http://www.kenstone.net/fcphomepage/fcp_homepageindex.html#dvd]

HD best compression choice?

Greetings,
I am working on a project in which all the source material is derived from a Digital SLR, being used to shoot "time lapse". It works pretty good, and the images are 3000x2000, which I can easily make into a movie using After Effects. I first began scaling the images to 1280x720 at 30fps, and would output this to DVC PRO HD 720p. (Another great thing is that you can introduce camera moves using AE at this step). Anyhow, I have lately been exploring the 1920x1080 format. When you use the template in AE, it specifies a frame rate of 24fps, which is really no problem for me, but it begs the question, given the nature of the source material, if that is the best frame rate for me? And what is the difference between DVCPRO HD 1080i60 vs DVDPRO HD 1080i50? Is this even the prefered output format for me ? Difficult to find information on these formats, and the manuals are no help. I have yet to upgrade to FCP6, but I understand there is a NEW HD compression scheme. So I guess, this is a general compression question, but would love to get any feedback from users on this one.
Thank,
Dave Berry

given the nature of the source material, if that is the best frame rate for me?
Well, this begs the question, what will you be delivering? 23.98 is a good frame rate, if your photos progressed at that speed. 29.97 is good if they progressed at that speed. What are you delivering? Format? To whom?
And what is the difference between DVCPRO HD 1080i60 vs DVDPRO HD 1080i50?
1080i60 is an NTSC frame rate...59.94fps...based on the 29.97 (30fps) NTSC standard. 1080i50 is a PAL HD rate, based on the 25fps PAL standard.
Is this even the prefered output format for me ?
Again...what format do you want to deliver? DVCPRO HD tape? HDCAM? DVD? Film out? This determines EVERYTHING.
I have yet to upgrade to FCP6, but I understand there is a NEW HD compression scheme.
Yes, ProRes 422. Uncompressed HD quality at 1/4 the drive space requirements. Many options available there.
Shane

Best compression rate - help - i'm still green

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