HDV to H.264 issue

I have had succeess encode my 1080i FCP QT's to h.264.
I'm not sure I'm fully taking advantage of compressor though.
I tried medium quality, and the image is not acceptable. I slided the quality control to directly between "medium" and "best" and it looks alot better, but my 7-min video, set to 50% size, is 200mg.
Videos on Apple's HD gallery are bigger with smaller (or comparable) file sizes.
The biigest problem I'm having is with the deinterlacer. I think the settings are normal, better, best. Any setting higher than "normal", the render times increase to 200hrs!
for reference, my film is at
http://rccm.org/news/rccmnews/2006/newyear1-06.html
click on "High definition"

Don't use the H.264 presets, but create a new preset for a Quicktime Movie. You can then select H.264 as the video codec and force the data rate to whatever you like.
I've been experimenting a lot with this lately and found 1Mbs H.264 is the sweet spot for small files but decent quality. Trying to figure out good settings for when the Apple Media Center is released.

Similar Messages

HDV to H.264 color loss

Anyone know why when I convert HDV to H.264 Quicktime media, that the color saturation washes out significantly? This appears to happen in Compressor with whatever H.264 settings I choose, however it doesn't happen going to MPEG 4.
Thanks,
Russell

Premiere is not the best tool for deinterlacing. You might get better results if you leave it as is and let your TV or PS3 do the upscaling.

Capturing HDV as H.264

IM using fcp 6 on a Mac book pro I’ve been asked to capture 2 HDV tapes as H.264. Do I do this in the capture settings of fcp or do I have to use compressor to convert to it?.
Thanks for any help.

I was wondering if theres a way of capturing HDV as H.264?
I have never tried it. On the few occasions that I worked with HDV, it was for editing and was converted to ProRes. Final Cut Pro does not really like H.264 anyway, you will probably have to render it as well.
You might consider trying QuickTime Player's "New Movie Recording" function under the File menu bar item which gives you the option of capturing the native format of your footage or directly as H.264. If it works (I never tried that with HDV either) you won't have to do any conversion at all in Compressor.

Workaround for compressor HDV to DVD field issue?

I need a work around for the field issue apparent when down-converting HDV to DVD.
The Bonsai method <http://www3.telus.net/bonsai/Welcome.html> will not work, as there is too much motion and a side effect of the "fastest" conversion is that it gives a 3-d ghosting effect on fast motion in the frame.
I can not convert to 720P60 or 480P, as FCP converts it to 30P and then doubles the frames, and the motion is jittery.
I could dump it to camera and then down-convert in camera, but I have heard this is not a great method either.
I have seen in another forum to save the HDV timeline in FCP as a HDV quicktime movie, and then import that into DVD studio pro and have it down-convert, but DVD studio pro says this is an "incompatible file".
How do I get 1080i HDV footage onto a DVD so that it looks acceptable?

I had a similar problem with HDV (1080i shot on Cannon HV-20) footage, looks great in post and terrible when converted (herringbone lines and too many artifacts.) I’ve successfully used the Bonsai method on another piece I did but the footage was shot on a HVX-200 at 720 24p and there were no “action” shots. I wasn’t as successful using the method using 1080i footage and it definitely didn’t help with the fast motion shots. I did a search in this forum on HD to SD and there are a lot of helpful hints and methods. I experimented with a lot of the suggestions but in the end I was able to produce very nice and acceptable results by doing the following:
1] I didn’t create an SD sequence; I exported the footage as a Quicktime movie (self contained) straight from my HDV sequence.
2] I dropped the Quicktime file into Compressor and selected 90-minute DVD Anamorphic Best 2-pass VBR. Running Compressor from Final Cut ties up your system as well as there seems to be a delay between the handoff from Final Cut to Compressor (running the latest 5.x version and 2.3.) Creating a Quicktime file frees your system and it’s debatable if you actually compress faster or take a hit on quality. I’ve tested both from Final Cut and using a Quicktime file and didn't see any real difference in quality.
3] Change the field dominance from Top to Progressive in the tab where you see 2-Pass VBR Best and also in the encoding tab (not in front of my system so I can’t recall the name or order of the icons). In the encoding tab you will notice it says “same as source.” The pull down will show you Top, Bottom, Progressive, Automatic…I tried them all and in various combinations and anything other than progressive in both tabs produced undesirable results.
4] The options for Fast, Good, Better and Best in the other encoding pull down sections are a matter of preference and patience. Selecting Best in all categories takes a really long time to compress (36 hours for a 9-minute piece using a Mac Pro 3.0GHz dual-core Intel with 4GB ram.) I ran tests using different combinations and found that selecting the default settings is decent and stepping each category up to the next level helped but not enough to warrant the long compression cycle to stick with Better across the board. When you do your testing, it’s best to use as little footage as possible or you will find yourself waiting too long to see the actual results. I used a 1-second (29 frames) shot of a girl twirling around, hair flying everywhere, and girls next to her using hula-hoop’s.
5] Use the sliding bar in the viewer to see the impact of your choices before submitting the job. To the right you will see the “original” footage and to the left you can see the results of your selection. You can move the bar across the footage to see (approximately) the end results.
6] One thing I did notice is that no matter what settings I use, the output is slightly darker (reds were deeper, skin tones were warmer and not as smooth), but hey, you are going from HDV to SD so it’s not going to be perfect.
Hope that helps and good luck.
Kenny

Converting HDV to H.264 for storage. Any simple way dates and clip splits can be preserved?

THE PROBLEM
Tapes are one of the riskiest ways to archive footage as not only is there the possibility of tape damage but the very real chance that the camera will fail after a few years leaving you with unplayable footage .. .. .. .. unless you are lucky enough to find a replacement one or are prepared to spend money on obsolete equipment.
A further disadvantage is the linear nature of tape which takes ages to import or spool through.
THE SOLUTION
Digital storage on hard drives, memory sticks or SD cards has none of these problems and your video can be played anywhere on any computer etc.
Furthermore after converting to H.264, the video is virtually identical in quality and only takes up 35% of the space (using FCP X's convert to H.264 default setting).
THE SNAGS
I intend to import all my HDV tapes, stick each one on the FCP X timeline and export it as mentioned above.
This will reduce my HDV file size to around 4GB which would also fit conveniently on one DVD, as well as the above mentioned storage devices.
The only problem I can see is that I wll lose the date/time and also the clip-breaks.
The precise date/time is not a serious problem but I would like to preserve clip breaks if possible, even though the inability to do so would not be too serious.
THE HELP?
So have there been any recent developments that would help me with either of these problems cheaply and quickly.
P.S. I know that I could burn the date/time on the first frame of every clip but that would take an eternity. I could also export every clip singly to H.264 but that too would take an age.

Thanks for the reply, however, unless I am missing something there would be no advantage over simply retaining the original imported HDV files and avoiding the additional time taken to create the archive?
The H.264 route preserves the quality whilst dramatically reducing the file size and will probably be a more universally accepted format than HDV.
Luckily I can live without the metadata and timecode but it would be nice to be able to preserve it.
Naturally I have written details but as they are not integral with the video, there is always the strong possibility of them being lost after my demise.
I intend to keep the HDV tapes and camera of course, but I don't know how long the camera (even when unused) will survive.
My original Canon Video 8 camcorder, bought in 1992 packed in after 8 years leaving me with 25 unplayable tapes until last year, when by a minor miracle I was able to borrow a Video 8 tape deck.
Similarly, my first mini-DV camera purchased in 2000, packed in recently but luckily I have another DV camera together with my HDV one which can still play them.
From the research I have done it seem quite general that many cameras, even when little used, bite the dust after a decade, probably due to electronic deterioration/malfunction. They work perfectly but the next time you use them the transport mechanism refuses to function even though there is obviously no mechanical wear.

HDV to DVD field issue

I need a work around for the field issue apparent when down-converting HDV to DVD.
The Bonsai method will not work, as there is too much motion and a side effect of the "fastest" conversion is that it gives a 3-d ghosting effect on fast motion in the frame.
I can not convert to 720P60 or 480P, as FCP converts it to 30P and then doubles the frames, and the motion is jittery.
I could dump it to camera and then down-convert in camera, but I have heard this is not a great method either.
I have seen in another forum to save the HDV timeline in FCP as a HDV quicktime movie, and then import that into DVD studio pro and have it down-convert, but DVD studio pro says this is an "incompatible file".
How do I get 1080i HDV footage onto a DVD so that it looks acceptable?

Just to make sure I undestand you (I am having the same problem...my video looks jagged and not very sharp).
You're saying to creat a new sequence that is the 720 x 480 10 Bit Uncompressed?
And then in Settings under field dominance set that to NONE and motion filtering quality to Best. When I put my sequence into this uncompressed timeline, do I need to render it or can I just go straight to compressor? Does it matter?
Are there any settings within Compressor to change, such as Deinterlacing, field dominance (progressive, lower/even, upper/odd), blur, anti-aliasing?
I am using HDV 1080i60 Codec to shoot in and edit.
Thanks so much. I will try your suggestion. Have you used this procedure much?

Seven hours to compress HDV to H.264 - to be expected?

I'm looking to buy a desktop to replace my laptop as my primary video editing/rendering tool, but I want to check that I'm doing everything I can to make my video compression run as quickly as possible as it is right now.
For example: I had 43GB of HDV video, all of it fairly high motion sports clips, and Compressor took a little over seven hours to compress it all into H.264 clips at 800kbps, totaling 1.3GB. I'm ready to buy a very powerful machine in order to drastically cut this compression time down, but I wanted to see how much of this is because of software limitations, as opposed to hardware limitations.
Thanks.

r daws,
I switched from a macbook pro to a mac pro 2.26 Nehalem. The simple answer to you question is that it will speed up your compressions dramatically if you know how to do it. I would estimate a factor of 10. That's right, it will take about 1/10 the time on a new mac pro vs a macbook pro, if you set it up right.
Now that is just using compressor. Rendering in FCP is faster, but not by that big of a factor. My experience is roughly 40-80 % faster.
Many of Apple apps, like iLife, you won't notice a ton of difference.
It all has to do with the number of cores and the utilization of the cores.
If you set up compressor to use qmaster, you can set up a quick cluster of 6-8 cores, and then compressor splits up the videos and runs 6 different instances ( separate copies of the program) which greatly speeds up the process.
Also, using multiple internal hard drives makes it much more convenient, and faster as well.
All said and done, it is hard to describe how happy I am with the speed difference between the Mac Pro and my MacBook Pro. Never go back.
But, the long answer is that 7 hours to compress could either be really great or really horrible depending on the settings.
It takes me roughly 4 - 5 Minutes to compress a seven minute video using the default settings on DVD-90 Best Quality. When I change the frame controls to produce a higher quality vid, the same sequence takes 45 Minutes.
Time is all dependent on the settings.
Ken

Compressor 3.5.2 and H.264 Issue

Lately I've been having a problem encoding H.264. I'm using a cluster within my MacPro. After submitting the job, Compressor never utilizes 100% of the eight cores, going up and down around 20%. Also the estimated process time keeps going up, and it brings the machine's performance almost to a halt. Canceling the job never finishes, usually requiring a hard reboot. I've only seen this issue with Apple's H.264 codec. I had no problem with the third party X.264 codec and MPEG2 codecs. The source file does no seem to be a contributing factor as it occurs with any type of source I've tried. Thanks for any advice.

You have much less than the recommended ram.
You want at least 1 gig per core.
Reset the cluster to 4 instances.
That's even too
much because some of the ram is utilized by other processes. You'll have more consistent luck with 2 for now. But that's better than not completing the render.
Get more ram.

More Compressor 3.5 H.264 Issues

Following on from this thread
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2109359&tstart=15
I also have compressor issues. All fine until the upgrade.
I have seen the interlace issues mentioned in the thread, and concur that the quality of the compression with the same settings as the previous compressor is very poor. We managed to address with some tweaks in the settings, most noticeably changing deinterlace to sharp in filters. But it is still not as good.
However, having thought we had fixed the issue we now have users complaining of the videos stopping during playback. I can't admit we have completely figured it out, but I think we are seeing the drop outs occuring in the videos compressed with compressor 3.5, those completed in the previous version don't exhibit the same issue.
The problem is worst with Windows XP, Vista occasionally and interstingly OSX never. We are using the latest version of Flash Player across all platforms, and have tested a number of different things.
Anybody seeing something similar?

After much experimentation it turned out to be an upgrade to JW Player solved the problem. Although the co-incidence with the upgrade to 3.5 was interesting, it was not relevant. For those using JW Player 4.5 fixed the issue, although 4.4 seems to include the fix.

Why is HDV to H.264 so slow?

I have a Sony HC1 and I'm trying to generate H.264 video of some wedding footage I shot for the groom, but its is taking absolutely forever to process. I have a 42 second clip that I'm just testing with and to do a 60min/H.264 and it is taking some four hours to process. That means my 15 min clip would take DAYS.
I don't have that slow of a machine (DP 2Ghz G5), so what in the world can I do to speed this up, is it just a bug in Compressor or is it just that slow?
thanks,
mike

QT Pro 7.0.3 is much quicker, about 20mins for a 3min sequence encode from DV PAL --> 320x240 H.264. I had some simple titles which looked fine.
I have Compressor v1.2.1, so maybe I don't even have a choice since I haven't checked to see of H.264 is in that version of Compressor (or does Compressor use the QT components?)
Files reduced by at least 1mb in size (9-12mb files orig) and much better quality. However still considering it it's the way to go because most people won't have the latest QT to view compared to existing MPEG1 or Sorenson formats.

HDV to H.264

We just completed a film in the Sony 1080i format and we ant to encode it to h.264 for posting it on the web.
I did a test strinking the fram size to 1280*720, besy quality and the file size was 1.3gig! (7 min)
Most H.264 on apple site would be about 200mgs for the same length film.
What am I doing wrong?
Thanks!

Your aspect ration is huge.
Drop it down to to 320x180 or smaller.
It's the web, not a HD TV.

CS4 HDV Capture and playback issues

Hey,
I am having trouble with HDV capture and playback on Prem Pro CS4. I tried all the steps mentioned on the article posted by Adobe, http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/405/kb405478.html
None of these steps have helped anything. I used the cleanup utility, re-installed everything and started from fresh and nothing happens. Capture is always out of sync, it ignores in and out points when batch capturing and playback is all jerky regardless of quality settings. The weird thing is, this only started happening out of the blue. I was using it on a project and it was fine. I hadn't used Prem Pro in a little while and then all these problems began. No change in hardware.
I am using Premiere Pro CS4 on Windows 7 and capturing HDV footage via firewire on a Sony Z7.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks!

With Win7, if you have not already done so...
Legacy Driver and Capture http://forums.adobe.com/thread/694890?tstart=0
- And a Picture http://forums.adobe.com/thread/727755?tstart=0

HDV to DVDsp Interlacing issues, Please Help

Hi All
can anyone help, heres my workflow:
Shot on Sony Z1(pal) HDV
imported to MAc via HDV1080i50 Firewire
Sequences setting HDV1080i50 present
edited like a dream!
exported to compressor
compressed to DVDsp 90mins BQ
authored to DVD via DVD studio
Played back on 40" Sony Bravia
Horrible Horizontal interlacing lines on any camera movement
What am I doing wrong, am i missing a baisc step somewhere?
Please help
Martin

If you are using the new FCS with compressor 3.5, it produces terrible SD video when converting from an HD format. One workaround: change your sequence setting field dominance to "none". (To do this, control click or right click on the sequence>settings>field dominance>none) rerender and then export to compressor. Results will be much better. There is a whole thread on this over in the compressor discussion board.
Steve

Final Cut Pro 7.0.3 XDCAM Issues

Having problems with Final Cut Pro 7.0.3 on a feature with XDCAM EX 1080p 24p
Using Sony cinemon plug-in to work natively with .mp4 files and Matrox mini MX02 on 2.2ghz quad i7 17inch macbook pro with 8gb ram and 2nd external monitor via mini-display port.
Media is located on external drive connected by firewire 800.
Timeline is playing at high quality with various repositions, 3-way color correction and 2.35 .png matte on top layer.
Crash analyser presents multiple reasons for crashes. 5 today ranged from:
QuickTime
This crash was caused by QuickTime.
Possible causes include corrupt media, corrupt render files, an unsupported or unstable codec, an image resolution that is too large (this is particularly a problem with Motion as image sizes are limited by the maximum texture size of your graphics card), or a version of QuickTime that is incompatible with your version of Final Cut Studio.
Corrupt / Unsupported Media
This crash was caused by corrupt media or media that is unsupported by Final Cut Pro. A common cause of this crash is using media on your timeline that is unsuitable for editing such as AVI, WMV or MPEG-derived codecs (XDCAM, HDV, MPEG-2, H.264).
MPEG Media
This crash appears to have been caused by MPEG media (or MPEG-derived media such as XDCAM, HDV or H.264) in the timeline. MPEG-based media is not recommended for editing in Final Cut Pro.
Effects Rendering
This crash appears to have occurred while trying to render effects on a clip. Possible causes for this include corrupt or unsupported media, a bad filter, a graphics card issue or too many filters applied to a single clip.
All of these crashes also listed -
This crash log suggests that Final Cut Pro was overloaded at the time of the crash. This can occur if your project is overly complex, has multiple Motion project layers or is using MPEG-based media (HDV, H.264, MPEG-2, XDCAM, AVCHD), particularly if you are using filters with such media. Note that overloading is more likely to be the cause of the crash than the reason below.
I feel like this is coming from the XDCAM media and want to know if there is anyone who has dealt with a similar problem and found a cause or workaround.
If any additional information is needed, please let me know and I'll provide any information I can.
-Fraunpetri

Shane,
Thanks for your response. When I was setting up this project, I asked around to multiple forums and professionals and many seemed to think that using native XDCAM EX footage was possible and that the newer systems would not have many issues working with it.
Is there anyway I can tweak my setup to help alleviate pressure on the laptop? If I didn't use the Matrox bob or was able to remove the 2.35 .png matte from the timeline, or possibly changed to medium quality for video in the timeline.
Transcoding to pro res does seem like it would help the situation but at this stage unfortunately that's not an option.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
-Fraunpetri

Bless this board. My HDV workflow 1

As I edited my 88-minute documentary over the last two months using FCP 5.0.2, I pored over the pages of this board several times a day. I was looking for tips, workarounds, and collective wisdom. For I had foolhardedly decided to edit the piece in native HDV.
Well this community got me through that painful ordeal. So I want to share what worked for me. For the most part, it's merely a synthesis of what better minds here have come up with. But I know there's a real need for a solid discussion about how to work with HDV. So I thought maybe someone might benefit from my experience.
1. WHY HDV?
- I was in the market for a new camera. I wanted to try 1080i. Sony was the only real, affordable player at the time. So I went for the Z1 (I'm a PD-150 afficianado).
2. WHY EDIT HDV?
- Until this documentary, I had downconverted everything when capturing. And it looked great. It certainly is the easier way to go. Especially if you KNOW you're going to broadcast and will have a post-production house get everything in order.
- But this time, with FCP 5.0 available, I wanted to try native HDV editing. Also, I wanted the ability to show the finished product in HDV via G5/camera output to an HD monitor or projector before finalizing for broadcast.
- Doing so also allowed me to order up 1080i graphics and see how they fit in the finished product.
- Some of the film festivals are now requiring HDCAM masters, so if I had to do things 'on the cheap,' I thought I can at least do a quick and dirty dub from HDV tape/camera to HDCAM tape.
3. EQUIPMENT
- No question, using a dual G5 made a huge difference in real time editing. Powerbook editing worked, but was a little sluggish and didn't allow me to see much in real time.
- I used Cinema Display for monitoring, which is a real cheat. There's no way I would use that for color correction though. I'm hoping to have SDI/Blackmagic etc. for my next project.
- I started out with 2 500 GB Lacie firewire drives to capture my 70 hours of footage. But they proved to be really unstable. So as soon as I had logged everything, I subclipped everything I needed and used Media Manager to copy them to a 2nd internal SATA drive. Much more efficient, much safer.
4. MIXING RESOLUTIONS ON THE SAME TIMELINE
- 20% of my footage was shot with a Sony TRV-900 camera with anamorphic adapter for true 16:9. I originally brought those SD clips into my HDV timeline. Requiring a render, and a resize each time.
- Thanks to this board, I discovered it was much easier to batch compress all my SD subclips in Compressor to uprez them to HDV. Worked like a charm in the HDV timeline afterwards.
- 1440x1080, 72 DPI for importing still images into an HDV timeline. Same thing for sequential images (animation).
5. EDITING HDV
- Fabulous and painless.
...continued...

6. BURNING HDV TO SD DVD
- It was always best to export the timeline to a self-contained Quicktime movie using "Current Settings." Much quicker than exporting directly from FCP to Compressor.
- iDVD's downconversion of an HDV Quicktime file was awful, with blocky artifacts etc.
- Using Compressor or Quicktime to downrez the HDV Quicktime file to SD, and then burning in iDVD was better. But it appeared dull, the titles looked pixellated, and I got that deinterlaced "film look" without really trying.
- My BEST solution was to use Compressor to turn the HDV Quicktime file into an SD MPEG2 file for DVDSP. But my G5 kept crashing (darkened screen, "reboot" message in several languages) a couple of hours into the compression. It was only after I used Disk Warrior on my system drive that it finally worked. I've heard that G5 memory is finicky as well, but I ran MEMTEST several times without a hitch. It doesn't help that my Quicktime file is 16 GB.
- Thanks to this board, I came across the best custom Compressor setting for HDV to SD for DVDSP. Because I'm dealing with an 88 minute feature plus 7-minute trailer for a single-sided DVD, this is what I did:
DVD: Best Quality 120 minutes 16:9. Use the Inspector to modify settings:
- VIDEO FORMAT tab Field Dominance: Bottom First
- QUALITY tab One Pass (NO VBR), Average Bit Rate 7.0, Best Motion Estimation
- GOP tab GOP Structure: "IP"
- FRAME CONTROLS "Off"
- FILTERS Check "Deinterlacing" select "Blur"; Check "Sharpen Edge" Amount "10"
Importing this asset into DVDSP, I used the MPEG2 file along with the smaller Dolby AC-3 file, discarding the larger AIFF sound file.
7. PRINT TO VIDEO
- This is the real hangup for me. I can't do it back to my Z1. It always stutters about 8 minutes into the piece.
- ScottSV from this board ( Scott SV, "FCP5 & Sony HDR-HC1 HDV Cam - Print to Video?" #1, 04:16pm Sep 17, 2005 CDT) suggested outputting the sequence to a Quicktime AIC file (custom settings 1920 x 1080, 60 FPS, top field dominant), then importing that new file into iMovie, then exporting to camera. It's a long process but it worked for me on a much smaller file. But you need tons of hard drive space and patience, and iMovie just quit on me when I tried with a 44-minute chunk of my documentary. I may go out and buy another large hard drive and try it again.
- Avid has just come out with its HDV plug-in for XPress Pro. But it only works with MT2 transport files, which are also huge. I've always had much more success with Avid when printing back to tape than with FCP. Even with SD. That said, I enjoy using FCP a whole lot more.
- I've heard that Apple is working on this HDV print-to-video issue. I hope they come up with a solution soon.
Feel free to check out the H.264 version of my movie trailer for "Independent America" at http://www.hrhmedia.com/page13/page14/page14.html. It's a fabulous codec, but as you can see, still not a flawless conversion of the original HDV file.
Hope this really long posting will be helpful to others. Special thanks to Scott SV, Max Average, Waymen, David Bogie and countless others for helping me get this project done through their feedback to this community.

HDV to H.264 issue

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