Compression Time - Conservation Film

Hello - I'm compressing a 40 minute movie shot in HDV to standard DVD format. It's been 3 hours and has been at 52% forever now and says 42 hours remaining. I wanted to post my specs to see if anyone out there could tell me if it was worth waiting that long so long as I did everything else right. Or maybe have a better option???
I first exported the whole movie to QT (7GB) and then dropped in Compressor.
Used One Pass, Best Quality 90 minutes 16:9, Field Dominance - Progressive, Moved the CBR to 8.9 mbps, Frame Controls - Better, Motion Adaptive and changed my destination to my eSata drive which is where the movie is stored. The QT I drug in is from the desktop, however.
I have a PowerMac G5, 2.0Ghz, 3 GB Ram - with 45GB of space on my PowerMac and a Lacie TwoBig.
Thanks as I have just missed my deadline today and really need to get it out by Monday now. Should I wait 42 hours (or does that go down later as is often seen with FCP render files?)
Mahalos and Aloha in advance
Bryce

Compression and decompression are extremely processor intensive tasks, with every pixel of every frame needing to be separately processed ... and depending on the codec this is complicated even further with advanced analysis requiring comparison between equivalent pixels in preceding and forthcoming frames, sometime using multiple reference frames, you can't even begin to imagine how complicated a task this is and it has to be done to the source file depending on its original codec (ie it needs to be decompressed) and the target file depending on that chosen target codec ... but that's what computers are good for so no worries, right? Wrong. Computer processors are optimized for general computing tasks, not codec specific compression and decompression tasks, so whilst using a computer is obviously a lot quicker than doing it by hand, it's still is going to take a long time. How long? Depends on how tricky the source and target codecs are, and how clever your computer is.
Hope it helps
Andy

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There are 2 things, in particular, that you're doing 'wrong,' so to speak.
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Second, iPods & iPhones have a limited frame rate spectrum. I've not seen anything less than 23.98fps or more than 30fps work correctly.
As Michael mentioned already, exporting directly to Compressor takes a tremendous amount of time, about 4x to 6x as long as dropping in a QT movie into Compressor. It's sometimes worth it because the compression quality is superior, but you don't seem to have the luxury of time.
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Best Quicktime Compression for Logic film score?

Hello everyone,
I dont have much knowledge with quicktime conversions, so please bare with me. I'm scoring a movie that was shot on DVCpro HD at a frame rate 23.98fpc (with some slow motion shots at 59.94, meaning they edited the project at 59.94fpc in FCP) and I need to get a movie file to start working on scoring the project, and they are asking me what I need, and I'd like to double check with you guys to make sure I'm doing this right
First off, they are asking me what frame rate I want. I obviously want the same frame rate as the final film, which will be 24fpc, right? Or do I want the 23.98 file? (The film makers really should know this, but after a bad experience with a past project "drifting," I like to double check their work).
They are also asking me what quicktime compressor I want for the visual data. Since I will be running logic pretty hard for this project (many samples/VI's), are there any recommendations for the best compressor to ask for? I will be placing the movie on its own FW800 drive, so does file size matter when streaming a video of a separate drive? If not, would it be best to get the raw, 17GB file? If size does matter, would it be best to get the smallest file possible (that I can still see the picture)? Do different compression settings effect quicktime performance in Logic differently? If so, which is the best, least taxing compressor to ask for?
I've also noticed that logics "audio detect frame rate" never seems to detect the proper frame rate. I should set this manually to the proper frame rate, correct? Are there any other sync settings I need to be worried about?
Sorry for all the questions. I just want to make 100% sure I'm doing this right!Thank you everyone!

Hi Jonathan,
In my experience, smaller files seem to take less of a toll on the overall system than large uncompressed files. Whatever increased processor load there may (or may not?) be from using a real time software codec is outweighed by the strain of playing the wide data stream of uncompressed video. My personal preference is to ask for the movie as a DV Quicktime (pretty big, hi-rez file) or on a miniDV tape. Then I can use Quicktime Pro to make my own smaller version. The H.264 codec is pretty amazing, I usually use that, and I usually cut the size of the frame in half when I convert the movie (i.e. 720x480 becomes 360x240.) Also, I usually make a lot of short movies when I re-compress rather than one big one. I find it easier to chop the film up into cues and then just work with the movie file for the cue I'm on.
Regarding Frame Rate: you won't drift. If you are in sync with your quicktime movie, then you are in sync. They need to make sure that the movie file they give you is correct, with no pull-up or pull-done, no sections from a different frame-rate source that haven't been properly converted and when they are converted they turn out to play at a different speed than on the movie file that they gave me, I mean you... I mean... ok, I'm ranting. I had a bad experience. But the point is that if you have a reliable Quicktime movie then you can't go wrong. The reason that you should set Logic to the same frame rate as what the filmakers are using is this: so everyone will be talking about the same unit of time when they say "frame." That's all. If they say "we're taking out 5 frames" it would be nice if you could cut 5 frames in Logic and know that you were correct. Check with your editor on this, but I believe that 23.98fpc is counted as 24fpc. So I think 24fpc is the right choice in Logic.
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Then, when I either mix a cue or export the tracks for someone else to mix, I include a little fragment of reference track audio before (or after) the music cue to to make sure the editor has an absolute position reference for the music.

Compression time

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Hope this is a simple question:
When using compressor to compress video for DVD, can anyone answer the question as to whether different compression settings take longer?
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Greetings,
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Read my "Profile" (click on my screen name) for more options.

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Compressing HDV to DVD 120 best quality.
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There is a time bar that was collapsed - hidden from me.

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I think possibly it could have something to do with my video settings. I don't know much about video settings.
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Let's see if someone can help , since the last update to 6.03 from 6,02 compressor will not compress anything submitted from final cut pro. When submitting final cut created the tab with the long number but as soon compressor is fully loaded the tab in final cut disappeared and when hit submit in compressor compressor just sits and nothing happens. I have tried to export as quick time first and put that in compressor and that works and sometimes does not work
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Does it really take 13 hours to encode a 1 hour 16 minute video?
Using Compressor 2.0.1 default 120 minute high quality setting. I have been encoding for 2 hours and 25 minutes, the encode is 72% done and it says it will take an additional 10 hours 52 minutes!!!!
That is slower than my dead grandma.
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It obviously depends upon the speed of your computer and the preset you use. On my 800MHz PowerBook I get about a 16 to 1 ratio for a two-pass best quality MPEG-2 preset when I export from FCP to Compressor v2. However, for a one-pass good quality preset I get under 2 to 1 (one hour of video compressed in under two hours) when I submit the job directly to Compressor.
I've seen a few recent reports from dual G5 users who have reported real-time two-pass MPEG-2 compression and much better than real-time for one-pass jobs.

FYI--Compressing times of a dual 450 vs dual 1.25 vs Quad

Just got my quad and after some hoops to jump thru I have fcp 4.5/compressor 1.2 running fine now.....
Now these times are not 100% accurate....off by a few minutes here and there but this is what i've got from going from two g4's dual 450 and dual 1.25 to a G5 Quad.....
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dual 1.25 - just video --approx. 10 hours
Quad - just video compress---under 1 hour and 30 minutes....
All I have to say is holy crap batman!!
For me getting the quad now certainly makes a lot of financial sense as I will be able to finish projects a lot faster. I have a back log of about a dozen projects. Can now ship off my slowest mac to a friend who can work for me as well.....:)
The Upgrade is coming in the next week or two and I should see a bit of a difference there as well.....
WOW WOW WOW.......
rob
Dual 450/1.25 G4 1.12/1.75 gigs of ram Mac OS X (10.4.2)

I just use the qmaster startup automator someone created
and shared on this forum a while back.
I put it in my Startup Items, and after a couple of clicks,
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My only probelm is I have a bit of an audio problem,
but I've created a work around for that, and all is well
under tiger on my Dual 1DDR.

Compressing Time Machine backup folder and burning to DVD

Can I compress the backup folder and burn to a DVD disc?
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It would have to be a pretty small backup to fit on a DVD. You won't likely find too much benefit from compressing the data because much of it is in binary form that is most likely not going to reduce much if at all.
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If a DVD will hold 4.7 GB does that mean my project cannot be more then 8GB for instance? Just as an example.
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I hope I don't sound too stupid.
no, you don't.
compression is some kind of "magic", codecs, bitrates, whatever...
so, for convenience&simplicity, Apple says:
iDVD can process files up to 120minutes
ok, a little less, depending on how excessive you make use of menus, buttons, music in the dvd's menu....
in case you're interested:
iMovie uses, as your camcorder, a video compressor called "dv", that is ~13GB per hour, a videoDVD has a different compressor, called "mpeg2" making 2h fit on a 4.4GB disk... what iDVD does, it converts your video... automatically...
the quality differs just of [u[length[> of the project! you get the best results with projects <60 minutes, but 120min looks good too...
for experimenting, I recommend usage of dvd-rw media... reusable

Compression Time - Conservation Film

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