Compression 20 min for DVD

I have been working with FCP 6.0.1 and i have built a symphony of visuals that lasts 20 min. It wont let me export straight into compressor (it compresses partially then the history countdown says 00:00) so i have to send it to quicktime 1st. My ultimate destination for this is DVD. I recorded SD NTSC DV 3:2. I guess i need a compression comparable to .m2v?

I think you need to step back a bit here.
Yes i do do a self contained movie, but what compression do i use in QT? i tried Animation
If you're trying to get to DVD why are you exporting to Animation?
What was your original sequence... DV NTSC?
If so then read through these posts again. Just export to QUICK TIME, USE CURENT SETTINGS, check SELF CONTAINED. Then bring that file into Compressor on it's own.... FCP is not in the equation at this point. Does that work for you?
Also, will recompress all frames prevent ghosting?
Probably not but it would help if you told us what you mean by ghosting and at what point in the process do you see it.
rh

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Direct export as m2v vs. export as H.264, then compress to m2v for DVD SP

Hello,
I am wondering what makes a better quality of finished video. If I have HDV video on FCP timeline and want to output it for DVD. What is better? To compress sequence directly into m2v using EXPORT USING COMPRESSOR (DVD Best Quality 90 min)
Or is should I first export as H.264 (using Compressor or QT Conversion) and then bring this H.264 into Compressor and compress it to m2v (using DVD Best Quality 90 min)
Thank you,
Paullie

Paullie
I think the answer is in the first paragraph of the tutorial:
"For quite sometime now, people have been posting to the Discussion boards regarding problems attempting to produce good quality standard definition DVDs when working with HDV video. HDV video does not encode well to MPEG 2. There are two ways that we can work with HDV video and get high quality standard definition DVDs. Both processes involve transcoding from HDV to Apple ProRes 422. The first process happens during capture. The second process can be used if you have already captured HDV video into FCP."
You are dealing with HDV and then need to take some special workflow to get the best quality. If you wearing using even plain DV, the best workflow is direct from DV to MPEG2.
Alberto

Compressing ProRes 2K for DVD Studio and getting rough edges?

I'm trying to get the best quality DVD burned possible working with a ProRes 2K project, original footage was 4K RED, and I'm getting rough, pixeled edges when I view the DVD. OK--Here's the workflow:
-All RED 4K ftg has been transcoded to ProRes 2K and edited into a ProRes 2K sequence
-I export a quicktime movie, self-contained
-I take that quicktime into Compressor
-I choose "Best Quality DVD 90 Minutes" setting for audio and video (AC3 and m2v)
-In the geometry, I choose the 2.35 padding to make the aspect ratio look right (this i had to figure out by troubleshooting it myself)
-I take those into DVD studio pro and burn them onto an SD DVD.
When I do this with my XDCAM 1080p footage, it looks fantastic. When I do it with this project's footage, it looks like garbage. Pixels, edges are rough, just looks like low resolution. I've tried all different options of bit rate, no 2.35 padding, etc. Everything looks low res on the DVD.
UPDATE: upon checking the quicktimes in each step, i notice the first quicktime export (the File>Export>Quicktime Movie (self-contained checked), looks fine, but the problem seems to be in the work the Compressor is doing. Any suggestions?
Please help!
thanks
Jason

Have you tried switching on Frame Controls? Experiment with some of the Frame Controls settings on a short section of the movie, particularly the Resize filter and Anti-alias / Details Level.

Compressing an iMovie for DVD?

I've never used the iMovie program till the other day when I recorded a friend's speech.
The file is 1 hour 12 minutes long. My DVD is 80 minutes.
How can I compress the file to fit the whole thing?

any DVD-r fits hours of video.. depending on compression..
iDVD allows a max. of 120min per disk..
simply drag'n drop your iM project into iDVD.. done.

I can't get the audio compressed small enough for DVD Studio Pro

It's only 89 or 96MB.It always ends up 1GB in DVDSP 4. I have Compressor 2 on a Mac G5 The video for 1.5 hours is a desirable size and quality but even when I make the audio file small, when I bring it into DVD Studio Pro it comes out 1GB or more. Is there any way to change the way DVD sees this asset? I am working on a Mac G5 Dual Proces. from 2003 / 8GB memory

Look to see if you still have A.Pack installed on your computer; it should be in the Applications folder on your boot drive. That's what was used for AC3 encoding prior to Compressor 3. In the meantime, you could lower the bit rate of the video in order to use the AIF audio file on your DVD.
-DH

Recently shot a 24min. short in HD.Fairly large file and I need to compress and burn to DVD.I realze I won't get HD on DVD,but I need decent compression for Festival submission.Any sample settings I might try?

Recently edited a short to 24min.in FCPX.It is 1920x1080 24fps.It is large and I want to send on dvd for film festival submissions.How should I compress in Compressor to have the best quality and get it all on a dvd.I realize I won't get HD,but I need it small enough for dvd retaining some quality.

The short answer is, take a short but representative section and "test" and "re-test" until you get the best results you can attain.
Some further suggestions:
I assume that the festival specified DVD and that Blu-Ray is not an option.
The size of the file really doesn't matter to Compressor except that it somewhat reflects your movie's resolution and down-scaling from HD sizes to SD can introduce artifacts.
Start with the standard Disk Burning preset; duplicate it and save as custom settings; name them appropriately as you make adjustments so you can see at a glance what settings worked better or worse.
In Audio, set Dialogue Normalization to -31.
Don't judge the image quality on your computer. The Apple DVD Player may give you a rough idea of whether you have issues. But it's necessary to play out to a broadcast monitor or TV from a DVD player to see what it will truly look like.
Although it's possible that basic Disk Burning preset will give you what you want, I suggest turning opening Frame Controls (which should already be turned on) and setting the re-size filter to Best. You should also consider doing the scaling and the MPEG 2 encodes as separate steps (separate jobs).
The Encoder section of the Inspector allows you to adjust quality settings. You can test CBR and VBR settings at different bit rates. If VBR, use the Two Pass; the default bit rates are pretty good…you might be able to bump them up a little, but I wouldn't go above 8 Mbs.
BTW, how were you planning to burn them? If it's from Compressor, choose Hard Drive as Output Device to make a disk image. You can burn multiple copies from that disk image. You can also drag the Video TS folder into DVD Player to get a preliminary look at your results.
Good luck.
Russ

Compression for DVD help

Hello,
I need some help using compressor.
I made an animated film using final cut pro. My finished project is 1440x960 which is a 3x2 aspect ratio with square pixels. These settings were used because my source material was still frames from a pro digital SLR camera.
I'm trying to make a DVD copy of it using DVD Studio Pro via Compressor. I realize I need to use the letterbox scale effect to get it to a 4x3 ratio without looking horizontally squashed on a TV, but I'm not sure how to figure out what percent to set it at. It's somewhere around 95 percent based on just looking at it, but is there a way to know EXACTLY what that percent should be?
If I use Quicktime to compress my movie, it automatically sets the correct letterbox scaling but it doesn't, at least not obviously, let you know what percent it uses. In addition, shouldn't Compressor do a better job compressing than Quicktime Compressor? Does it even output the required format for DVD's?
Thank you in advance for your help.

Use photoshop and make your photos 720 x 480, 72dpi.
Then import them into FCP.
Edit them up, export out as quicktime movie.
Then import them into Compressor.
Encode them with 7.0 mbps average, 8.2 max, 2 pass vbr, best.
For audio, use dolby digital, 224kbps, -31 normalization.
Should be fine.

Compressing Video for DVD Burn Makes Text Look jagged

Hello,
I'm currently at the final steps of a lengthy video production project and am struggling to make the text elements of my finished video display correctly after compression prior to burning it to DVD.
I create and produce music for a living and don't have nearly as much experience with video editing. I'm a bit new to all of this and am using FCE 4.0.1 to create my video & Compressor and DVD Studio Pro 2 to compress and author video for DVD.
*My main issue is this:*
I'm using an imported still image as the title card for my film. It's a mixture of large plain Helvetica Neu font text with some additional stylized lettering created in Photoshop (which is why I'm not using FCE's built-in text generators for the title card). The typography isn't very wild and crazy, it's basically big bold letters and a few gentle curves. I exported the image (1200x600) from Photoshop as a .png and imported it into FCE.
When I export my finished video file (.png title card and all) out of FCE, I export it as a raw uncompressed Quicktime file:
Apple Intermediate Codec 1440x1080i
29.97 fps
Pixel Aspect Ratio: HD (1440x1080) (Anamorphic not checked).
Field Dominance: Upper (Odd).
(It displays in quicktime at 1920x1080 though.)
After initially exporting from FCE, the title card image and all the other text in my movie created from FCE's built-in text generators look fine. It's only after I compress the finished movie in DVD Studio Pro or Compressor that I get jagged looking edges on the curves of my letters, primarily the title card image (the text generated by FCE's generators holds up okay).
In compressor I'm using the "MPEG-2 6.2 Mbps 2-pass settings for DVD" preset and in DVD Studio Pro. Using '2 pass VBR', 'Best' motion tracking, 'best' and 'highest quality' on all the compression settings I can find. I'm encoding at a total rate of 6.5Mb/sec max and 6Mb/sec average. These are standards for compressing to DVD and since I'm preparing a master for reproduction, I've been told I shouldn't increase the data rate over this or I'll run into player compatibility issues down the line.
Any ideas on how I can make this text image last through the compression process and still look clean and crisp without having to increase the data rate of compression? I'm going to play with different file formats for now, but it that doesn't work I don't know where to go from there.
Thank you for any help insights you can provide.

I started with a variety of HD raw footage (most of it gathered on Canon 5D Mkii SLR Digital camera in the form of: H.624 1920x1080) but converted all my raw footage prior to editing into:
Apple Intermediate Codec 1440x1080i
29.97 fps
Pixel Aspect Ratio: HD (1440x1080) (Anamorphic not checked).
Field Dominance: Upper (Odd).
I edited everything in Final Cut Express 4.0.1 using the AVCHD Apple Intermediate Codec 1440x1080i60 at 29.97 fps sequence preset.
When I finished editing all my video I exported it as a raw uncompressed quicktime file which is also:
Apple Intermediate Codec 1440x1080i
29.97 fps
Pixel Aspect Ratio: HD (1440x1080) (Anamorphic not checked).
Field Dominance: Upper (Odd).
But when played in quicktime this finished video displays at 1920x1080, which I'm happy with. (I'm assuming this is the proper behavior of Apple Intermediate Codec? It seemed to take 1920x1080 footage, converted it to 1440x1080, and then spit it back out as 1920x1080 after the whole editing process.)
But seeing as how my issue is with an image file I'm creating in Photoshop and importing into my video sequence, I don't quite understand how the rest of my footage would really effect it. I've made sure to create the image using the same dimensions and pixel aspect ratio as my sequence frames by using one of the standard Photoshop screen templates (HD widescreen 1440x1080). I save my title card image as a non-interlaced .png file and import it into FCE.
When I place the imported image on the timeline, FCE doesn't resize it because it matches the frame dimensions of the sequence. When I view the image at 100% in FCE's viewer all of the image's lines, curves, and shapes display properly as they appear in my original photoshop file.
But for some reason FCE treats this imported .png image file as a 'rendered proxy.' So while it looks fine in FCE prior to rendering and exporting, when I export the video sequence containing this newly imported title card image, the resulting uncompressed quicktime file contains jagged horizontal lines across some of the characters in the title card image. It almost looks as if there's some interlacing issue going on.
However after much experimentation and trial and error I landed on a custom compression setting in Compressor that seemed to take care of this issue. I did as you recommended and selected a high quality 7.5 Mbps encoding preset (7.5 Mbps max/6.4 Mbps average), but noticed a 2 pass VBR rendered better results. What really seemed to do the trick was adding a deinterlace filter to the compression preset, and that miraculously seemed to eliminate the jagged lines in my title card image, restoring it to its original appearance (at least during my initial inspection in Compressor's preview mode).
After letting Compressor crank away, I looked at the finished compressed video in quicktime and the jagged interlaced-looking lines in my title card image have returned. Compressor's preview was somehow misguided.
Now my plan is to burn this compressed video to a DVD and view it on a TV to see if maybe these jagged lines in the final compressed version are only being caused by viewing on my computer's monitor. I'm hoping this is the case, otherwise I'm at a loss of what to do next.
If you need any more details please let me know. Otherwise I hope this is enough to give you a better idea of what issues I'm dealing with.
Thanks again for your insights.

Best Quicktime compression for DVD playback later on?

I have some DV footage that I had captured into MPEG-2 files on my old PC, then recently got a Mac and I want to be able to edit the footage on the Mac software I have and put it onto DVD for standard playback on a TV.
I've got the latest Quicktime Pro with the MPEG-2 playback component, and another program I just found called MPEG Streamline that allows me to convert the MPEG-2 files into MOV files that can be edited in iMovie and Final Cut Express, of which I have, and then I plan on just using iDVD to put the projects on DVD.
I've converted some footage using 3 different compressions: Apple DV 25, JPEG Motion A, and H.264 at NTSC 720x480 resolution so far, and cannot see any noticeable difference in the picture quality between the three converted files when played full screen with Quicktime, but of course, there is considerable difference between the resulting file size for each video. With all three files played back in Quicktime, there was some faint pixelation around moving figures in the video, even after setting the video stream to play back high quality.
I would like to know if there is and what the best compression to use would be in converting the MPEG-2 files into MOV files or other format that's compatible with iMovie and Final Cut Express that will result in the best quality for DVD playback. I don't have Final Cut Pro so I don't have Compressor, which I understand, has a preset compression optimized for DVD playback later on.

Nevermind, I just used DV compression and the playback quality came out just fine on the DVDs I've burned from the footage.

Animation compression for DVD

I have a square pixel after effects project which is around 10gb rendered at DV Pal square pixels and animation. I wish to present this with a laptop & projector. When compressing the file through basic DV Pal settings it looses much of the quality.
Is there a compression for putting animations onto DVD's with a sqaure pixel ratio that doesn't stretch the pixels for DVD - or am I being really daft here!! Is it possible for DVD's to play square pixels??
Many thanks

I have a square pixel after effects project which is
around 10gb rendered at DV Pal square pixels and
animation. I wish to present this with a laptop &
projector.
If you're going to have a laptop anyway, why not just install QuickTime (if it isn't already installed) and just play the file directly. That way, you're not losing anything quality-wise.
DVD makes no provision (that I'm aware of) for displaying non-standard frame types and MPEG-2 is your only compression option.
-David

Compressor 3: Compressing to M2V for a DVD creates a shaky look to my entire video.

This is a Compressor 3 issue I'm trying to compress a M2V for a DVD but it keeps creating a shaky look to my entire video. I have done this multiple times, but what is new to this FCP project is text zooming in, Canon 7D footage, and light rays layered on top of my video and text. I have looked up this issue on creative cow with no luck. I've tried single pass and double pass, still leaves me with shaky footage. I need this project to be done for a client and I can't explain why it isn't working.

Do this in two passes. First resize your video from HD to SD. Then import your SD into compressor. All DVD footage is 720x480 for NTSC and 720x576 for PAL. You want to create anamorphic SD video to handle the widescreen. One of the easiest ways to debug your DVDs is to rip them back before burning them to disk. In DVD Studio Pro use the format option instead of burn. This will create a VIDEO_TS folder on your hard drive which you can then read using software. Rip the video back from the DVD with DVDxDV or another professional DVD ripper that can output video in Quicktime ProRes. Import your video into Final Cut Pro, and play it back. When you get the encoding right, go ahead and burn the DVD in DVD SP.

Compressing for DVD without Compressor?

I am trying to export to MPEG 2 for DVD from FCP6 but I can't use Compressor. It's crashing and I haven't figured out why yet.
In the meantime, is there a process for exporting sequences to Mpeg 2 right from Final Cut? thanks

BCason wrote:
Actually, I can't even get DVDSP to let me import the files into the asset bin. It says there is no compatibility. That's where I get hung-up.
What exactly does "says there is no compatibility" mean? Do you get an error message and if so, then you need to say exactly what it says. Are you dragging it into the Assets tab or going via the Import Asset command? Or are BOTH not working? As others have already asked: what are your export settings in FCP, specifically *_which codec are you using_*?
cheers

Compressing video for dvd - which tool?

I am wondering what tool would give the best results (quality wise) for encoding for DVD - FCP, Compressor or DVDSP?

Yeah, I'm using Compressor now. I also have an older copy of BitVice Lite that I bought a couple years ago, but I haven't used it for quite some time (just getting back into the video thing). So I was also wondering if Compressor is comperable to it, or any other third party tools.
I just edit "film" for fun, so I'm aiming for the best quality possible, but it is not for professional purposes.
Thanks for your comments.

Went through setup for DVD PRO still not working

So I have done what are the protocalls that are appropriate for DVD PRO and the problem now is that I cannot drag my compressor file into DVD PRO.
It just bounces back to Finder or where ever else I find it. I give up don't know what to do now I am stuck. Thanks for everyones help. Also I still get the
incompatible format pop up-I am totally against a wall-do not know what to do at all.

I captured from mini-dv tape so I used dv 48khz or dv ntsc for my setup codec. I used send to in FCP to compressor. I used best quality DVD 90 minutes in Compressor. I am working with NTSC. I imported my compressed project clicking on asset. When I did this I get a box that pops up and says incompatible format.
Problem is I have no idea how to get a compatible format or what they are talking about since I followed the
correct protocol or at least it seemed correct to me. I know it is something I am missing-I just do not have the
knowledge to trouble shoot this particular problem. So that is where it stands of this moment.

Best way to Encode 3 short SD clips for DVD

Im compressing three graphic, video, and audio heavy clips (7-12 minutes each) to put on DVD. I moved them from FCP to COMPRESSOR and am using the standard high quality 90 min. DVD encoding settings.. (bit rate between 6.1 and 7, high quality, two pass encode).. Im assuming this will be sufficient..
Does anyone have an even better way to encode these?
Thanks

Audio - AIFF from FCP or Dolby 2.0 from compressor? (and why?)
ac3 dolby from Compressor, primarily because uncompressed Aiff takes much more space while ac3 is compressed keeping quality very good and ideal for DVDs. There are are also reports of some Aiff audio hiccups occurring with a number of DVD players.
can you review the practical difference between CBR & VBR?....
CBR means that bit rate is assigned evenly according to your bit rate choice regardless of scenes, effects,transitions that require higher or lower bit rate. VBR allows you to set an average and maximum bit rate and a two- pass is even better because the video is first explored/analised then bit rate is assigned more intelligently.
In your case I think you'll be fine with CBR.
G.

Compression 20 min for DVD

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