Final Cut Pro to convention-safe MPEG2

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Final Cut Pro to convention-safe MPEG2

Postby dokool » Mon Feb 26, 2007 8:11 am

So I have my final export (640x352, 29.97fps progressive) in the can, and I need to make something I can submit to a convention. Can I do this in Compressor (adding the black bars along the way) or do I need to make the vid 640x480 inside FCP before I encode?
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Postby Zero1 » Mon Feb 26, 2007 6:49 pm

I can't help you with the Mac programs I'm sorry, but do you know what equipment they will use at the con? I was just taking into consideration for non square pixels and such, or DVD playback; you may like to look into 720x480 with a 16:9 AR tag, or simply 720x480 letterboxed.

If they are running a projector off a PC or something, then I suppose it doesn't matter and square pixels is fine, but thought I'd just mention it. Better safe than sorry :)
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Postby dokool » Mon Feb 26, 2007 8:05 pm

Zero1 wrote:I can't help you with the Mac programs I'm sorry, but do you know what equipment they will use at the con? I was just taking into consideration for non square pixels and such, or DVD playback; you may like to look into 720x480 with a 16:9 AR tag, or simply 720x480 letterboxed.

If they are running a projector off a PC or something, then I suppose it doesn't matter and square pixels is fine, but thought I'd just mention it. Better safe than sorry :)


I... never understood the point of people who don't have familiarity with the scope of the question attempting to answer the question anyway.

*turns on the Shazzy-signal*
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Postby Shazzy » Tue Feb 27, 2007 12:39 am

What you want to do is nest your sequence in another. This only takes a few seconds.

Here is my original sequence settings designed to match yours:

Image

Here is my convention sequence settings with a frame size of 640x480:

Image

I open up my convention sequence timeline. I drag my original sequence icon from the Browser into the timeline. Everything is now letterboxed appropriately.

Image

Image

Export your convention sequence in Compressor using normal 4:3 settings.

There can be a couple of mishaps depending on what sort of effects you used. Look through your new sequence, and if you notice anything weird, let me know.
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Postby Shazzy » Tue Feb 27, 2007 1:21 am

And this is now on the mac guide site here.
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Postby Athena » Tue Feb 27, 2007 10:38 pm

Clearly I should stop working on my mac guide then. Beat to it, I see.
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Postby Shazzy » Wed Feb 28, 2007 10:03 am

Kionon wrote:Clearly I should stop working on my mac guide then. Beat to it, I see.


Err, these have been up since January 2006 =\
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Postby Zero1 » Wed Feb 28, 2007 7:10 pm

dokool wrote:I... never understood the point of people who don't have familiarity with the scope of the question attempting to answer the question anyway.

The point was, I clicked this thread to assist someone looking to make convention safe MPEG-2. Had the thread title have said "At which point do I add borders to my video on Mac?", or something to that effect, I would have ignored it, but rather than hitting back and forgetting about it, I thought I might try to offer some assistance, while I'm here.

Having re-read the original post, sure it doesn't directly answer your question, but it's not completely out of scope either. You were asking about resolutions, and I came back with something relevant as far as "convention safe MPEG-2" goes (in as much as using CCIR601 vs square pixels for DVD/TV/projector playback).
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Postby Athena » Wed Feb 28, 2007 10:15 pm

Shazzy wrote:
Kionon wrote:Clearly I should stop working on my mac guide then. Beat to it, I see.


Err, these have been up since January 2006 =\


I don't see how that helps me. Unless you're saying they're outdated and a new one is needed so I should keep working on mine.
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Postby dokool » Thu Mar 01, 2007 7:59 pm

I'm getting horrible, <i>horrible</i> jaggies on my MPEG2 when exporting the sequence through Compressor. I'm not sure why, because it's 29.97 progressive the entire way, and none of my other outputs have had the problem before.

I'm going to try doing an uncompressed AVI and running it through TMPGEnc.
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Postby LantisEscudo » Thu Mar 01, 2007 10:34 pm

Compressor seems to hate me, too. I've pretty much given up on it as an AMV encoder, and have been using QTPro->Uncompressed AVI->TMPEGEnc to generate my MPEG2s.

Here's a particularly ugly example frame comparison from my latest video (shrunk to not break the table), the left is Compressor's output, the right is TMPEGEnc's after converting the MOV to an uncompressed AVI:
Image

No clue what causes it, but this is the third or fourth video that Compressor has bungled like this.
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Postby Athena » Thu Mar 01, 2007 10:38 pm

Why are you using MPEG2, DVD Production? I usually use h264 for distribution and lossless copies for contests.
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Postby BasharOfTheAges » Thu Mar 01, 2007 11:24 pm

Kionon wrote:Why are you using MPEG2, DVD Production? I usually use h264 for distribution and lossless copies for contests.


Some cons specifically request MPEG2 submissions - well, AFAIK most of them i've submitted to actually require some sort of MPEG2 compression.
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Postby elvirasweeney » Mon Mar 05, 2007 1:45 pm

First off, I love Shazzy's guide! Can't thank you enough, Shazzy! And I'd love to see Kionon's guide. The more the merrier. The more knowledge, the better. Bring it on! We need more information for Mac users!

Regarding MPEG-2: This probably won't help, but I'll throw it out there just in case. The little cheapie app VisualHub makes MPEG-2 files. Could you export out of Final Cut using Quicktime Conversion (uncompressed format of your choice) and then convert with VisualHub? Would the quality be acceptable?
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Postby Shazzy » Tue Mar 06, 2007 3:31 pm

elvirasweeney wrote:First off, I love Shazzy's guide! Can't thank you enough, Shazzy! And I'd love to see Kionon's guide. The more the merrier. The more knowledge, the better. Bring it on! We need more information for Mac users!

Regarding MPEG-2: This probably won't help, but I'll throw it out there just in case. The little cheapie app VisualHub makes MPEG-2 files. Could you export out of Final Cut using Quicktime Conversion (uncompressed format of your choice) and then convert with VisualHub? Would the quality be acceptable?


You could, but why you'd want to...since Compressor is, hands down, the best MPEG-2 compressor for Mac. Compressor uses a better compression algorithm than anything else, which means same visual quality in a smaller file. And it comes free with FCP =p
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