Apple's encoder

[jchansen]

Hi folks.

Like everyone else, I've experimented a lot with video and settings for Apple's mpeg2 encoder. It's agreed that its quality is not stellar. Does anyone have definitive steps to take to somewhat improve it and avoid 1)washed out colors and 2)flickery or shimmery video when panning horizontally.

I'm not sure what the best way is to work through the interlacing issue, when starting with DV source. Automatic/top field/bottom field? Or export to something else first? I'm editing in FCP and exporting directly from there.

[pants]

dv footage is lower/bottom field first. if that helps. also how/what settings are you exporting in from fcp? have you tried just exporting a ref movie? file, export, fcp movie, leave boxes uncheck and have it on high quality.

pants

[jchansen]

I'm exporting directly with the mpeg2 encoder. Good to know that lower field first is correct. I assume that the automatic setting chooses that based on source. I've tried bitrates between 5.0 and 6.5 Mbit. 5.4 is my target for the amount of video. Of course the quality improves quite a bit above 5, but I'm more concerned about the flicker or shimmer, which happens all the time, when low-bitrate artifacts aren't there. It is especially clear during hornizontal pans; vertical lines flicker a great deal.

I've checked out the apple forums, and there are a lot of uninformed people who seem to follow a lot of voodoo. Is there any advantage to exporting from FCP to something (like a ref file) and then using QT to export to mpeg2? Or is this the flaw of the QT mpeg encoder?

I wish that Apple would create a VBR version. I know Bitvice works better, but having a QT plugin is so darned convenient.

[CJ of FL]

I wish that Apple would create a VBR version.

According to DVDSP's manual, Quicktime Pro does encode with a VBR. I also read elsewhere that it applies a lot of smoothing to hide artifacts.

[AntnyMD]

My impression from the Apple documentation is that the Quicktime MPEG-2 encoder will encode "VBR" in the sense that you can insert "compression markers" in video edited in Final Cut Pro, which tells the MPEG-2 encoder to change bitrates based on pre-defined (by the user) compression notes from Final Cut.

[jchansen]

I'll be damned. It does say VBR. This prompts me to ask then what can create those compression markers. Is it possible to run a plugin over the video in FCP, and effectively roll your own VBR?

According to bitvice's documentation, some VBR encoders are effectively CBR encoders. I would include Apple's here, first because it only makes one pass, and second by watching a DVD build and noticing that the graph is very flat.

What's the verdict? Is anyone completely satisfied with the Apple encoder used with DV source (not a DVD rip)?