Compressor,.....not impressing me.

R

RyanBellaCine

Well-known member
So i've been messing around with compressor and FCP 5.1.2 for a few weeks now trying to find the magic formula for really ridiculously good looking streaming files that are small enough for 200kbps DSL. 512 DSL and 1MB broadband speeds. 3 sizes respectively. Using the miracle H.264 codec. A few things i've noticed in my toils..

1. Even 5 min clips are horrendous to render out on a Dual 2.0 G5. Especially when you need to keep doing trial and error formulas... one trail went as high as 24 hours! for a measly 5 min clip!! WTF indeed... Wish we had a Macintel quad 3.0 as i read that they can cut render times by a 1/3. Anyone out there that can verify this? Can't wait to see what the "Intel Core V8" MacIntels do when they get released later in 07. An 8 cylinder computer just amazes the mind. Who know that we were working with 1 cylinder Brigs n Stratten lawn mowers all these years.... But i sidetrack....

2. There is absolutely no reference material that clearly explains what settings work best, and why. Tutorials found on apples web sites and the help files do some explaining, but there are no real guidlines to follow (except bitrates) Hence the many many tedious trial and error tests.

3. Why is it that when using roughly the same settings in FCP Quicktime conversion and Compressor, (as close as the different menus will allow) you get completely different results? Compressor is supposed to be such a good program, but the thing not only takes much longer to do its job, i also seem to be getting poorer results then by just using FCP conversion... another WTF.

4. I guess i'll share my settings im using as of now and see what you guys make out of it. These seem to be the best i've come up with yet; quality vs render times vs bitrates. Just like the infamous production triangle, can't seem to ever get all 3. Average times are between 30 - 120 minutes to render various files roughly 2- 6 minutes long. We are going to be doing lots of these renders in the future so need to get that magic formula right. I'm sure things will change when we do get a faster MacIntel motor. But for now the ol PowerPC V-Twin will have to do.


All renders in H.264 & Hinted for streaming

Small: 200 kbps friendly.

15fps
240x180
deinterlace
150 data rate - Streaming
auto keyframe
aac mono 32k 64-73 VBR

Medium: 512 kbps

320x240
current fps
320 data rate - streaming
auto keyframe
deinterlace
stereo AAC 44.1
128kbps

Large: 1Mb Cable/ Lan

480x360
current fps
900 Data Rate - Streaming
auto key
stereo AAC 48.1
128kbps
deinterlace
 
Compressor is slow, no doubt on that one. But its what Apple gives you with Final Cut Pro suite, so if you don't want to have spend more money on other software then you need to work with it. However, if you are willing to get other software, the one that gets recommended, around here anyway, is BitVice. The claim is that it will give you Compressor comparable quality with greatly increased speeds. Being that you will be doing quite a few compressions, it might be worth investigation on your part.

As for reference materials as to what works best and all the like, that's true there isn't a great deal out there. There is some online magazine, Edit Well or something to that effect, that did an article on Compressor not too long ago though. Additionally, coming out in December will be a Compressor guide book or such. Its been mentioned a few times here on the FCP forum. Might be later than you'd like, but perhaps something to think about getting when it does come out, as you'll be doing more compressions in the future (unless you switch to BitVice for good, then maybe not worth it).

As for your quality problems, no clue on that one. I've used the H.264 a few times and have had plenty of success with it. Just used it to get some of our footage onto an FTP for a director that was out of town, but that's about it. 5-6 minute pieces and solid quality to file size ratio as far as I was concerned. I just used the FCP conversion for that stuff myself. Can't recall the settings though I'm afraid, and certainly didn't have the kind of strict bandwidth target demands that you do. Anyway....

cheers.
 
Bit Vice only does MPEG-2 for DVD authoring.

Compressor takes longer, as it does more than the simple QuickTime engine alone does. It ignores your FCP render files and re-renders for slightly better quality compresson.

I do H.264 for the web and get great results. Not kowing what your original footage is formated as, I can't tell you anything specific. But I do see that you're keeping the audio rate up way higher than nessisary for the web. Drop it way down, it'll still sound good. 22.05/16-bit will still sound really good for the web, IF you're original sound is really good, too.

Frame size is important, you can't just pick abritrary sizes and have them come out well. I find a 50 percent reduction works fine. Also, if you get hung up on render times, you'll drive yourself nuts. Nobody is getting great quality web video in a matter of a few minutes, so just forget about that.

The better quality you want, the more render time you have to wait on, period. And no one really publishes set in stone settings, as so many things can effect it. How much movement is involved? How saturated are the colors? What is the original's format? What target file size are you looking for?

I find many folks starting off with web encoding try to target files way too small to get good quality. I suggest you down load other web videos that have the coloring, movement, length, etc, as yours does. In QuickTime Player, pull up the info window and look at what it's been encoded at. Look at several videos and see what other folks are doing. Encoding for the web is not as cut and dry an issue as simple editing is. There's lots of variables.

I recently stopped encoding for dial-up, too many folks have high speed. And those who don't, well, I feel bad about it, but I have to target the majority of the audience. That's just business.
 
Thanks for the imput. The renders im creating are from a quicktime movie (FCP icon) exported first from FCP. All the graphics and other effects are already renderd out. NTSC DV video. From this movie, i tried a few different ways to convert for the web. Dragging the movie clip into compressor, and going though a new sequence in FCP, exproting to compressor. I don't expect by any means a web render to take 4 seconds. But when i ran across 14 - 24 hour render times for 5 min clips, that was just absurd. 30 -60 min seems reasonable to me.

I would love to just outright abandon the small version of the rendering, but this is for a public school district and we have to please the worst case senerio. But we do draw the line at anything below DSL.

the only real problems i see in the renders i've created are either they look interlaced , which i'm looking into fixing that issue during the movie clip export before taking it too web converting... and loss of detail in hair and other textures. Some of the videos come out looking too smooth. and others look fine.

But their is one other thing that baffeles me. Despite setting the data rate to streaming and a specific target of 900kbps for example, the finished movie comes out to play back at rates up to 2000kbps. I know the audio rate adds to that total, but thats qite a difference from what i asked for.

If you don't mind, could you check these examples out. The same video in the 3 different sizes....

rtsp://qt01.ocps.net/~gearyn/costalcleanuplarge.mov

rtsp://qt01.ocps.net/~gearyn/costalcleanupmedium.mov

rtsp://qt01.ocps.net/~gearyn/costalcleanupsmall.mov
 
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Again, what is the format of the FCP Sequence you're editing the original in?

Actually, the only problem I had was with the large version, blocking due to network congestion, but that was really only in a couple of spots. In Real Player it played almost flawlessly. The medium and small versions tell me File Not Found.

So, if this is for a school, they are running this off their own servers, correct? Do they have the QuickTime Streaming Server software installed on the server? This would boost performance a great deal. Just thinking out loud.

If you using regular NTSC-DV, I'd save it out as a QuickTime, but NOT self contained. Open in QT Player and Export it as a QT Movie with 15fps, keyframe automatic, data rate automatic, quality medium, 360x240. Sound as AAC, 22.05 kHz, mono, quality normal, 16-bit (you may even get away with 8-bit), VBR, precedence none (click the Show Advanced box). Audio is important, as over the Internet it can eat up bandwidth more than other mediums experience. And check the Prepare for Internet Streaming, Fast Start option, too.

That's just what I'd do off the top of my head right away. I'd love to get my hands on a copy of a self-contained QT of the clip to play with.
 
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Do you have Quick Time Pro? If so try these settings:

Video:
Frame rate = 15
Key frame every 75 frames
Frame Reordering
Quality - High
Restrict Data to 1760
Optimized for Streaming (if going to the web)
Multipass for Best Quality
Size - 320x240 (or whatever you want)

Audio:
AAC
Stereo
48.00Khz
render - normal
AAC Encoder - Constant Bit Rate
Target Rate = 160
Precedence - Bit rate

Fast Start Streaming

I am still learning how to get the best possible look with compressing video for the web. I have some of my work on my myspace page that I have uploaded. The compression could be a whole lot better in my opinion but it doesn't look bad and I used those settings I listed above.
 
Check the clips again, when i first posted i accidentally linked to the wrong files, and had to go back and edit. they worked when i clicked on them just now.

I'll give those settings a go. thanx for all the help n imput. let me see if i can upload the movie clip to an ftp so you can play with...

EDIT:
video are running off a quicktime streaming server. I have no idea of the hardware being used, could be an older xserve, and i have no idea what kind of connection we put out to the outside world. Both those factors are being controlled by the IT department. My department does the video production projects and other "video services" which support the entire school district. The server is not any one school, but for the enitire school district headquarters.

The files MUST be hinted for streaming server. The fast start options simply do not work with the server.
So far the auto bit rate settings are looking good but i'm afraid that it may be too greedy for the target data rates.

Which raises another point in my testing. Its not easy to test the video going to the outside world because our connection is internal to the server and basically too good comparatively. Even my home connection is too fast, getting at least 6Mbps with my cable broadband. so the large files play perfectly fine to me. its those users who have the slower DSL speeds and slower computers which i need to watch out for. A few coworkers have the slower dsl speeds but of course i have to wait for them to get home and then back to work the next day to hear the results.... very tedous work....

just tested out a 15 second clip of one of the other videos we are testing. this one has lots of movement.

240x180
auto data
auto key
15fps
32k audio @ 48kbps (sorry but hte lower 22/16 just sounds horrible to me)

The movie info says the data rate on this one is 840kbps range. thats a bit over the limit on the target 512kbps connection speed which intended this size to be for. but heres a look....

[URL="rtsp://qt01.ocps.net/%7Egearyn/testy2.mov"]rtsp://qt01.ocps.net/~gearyn/testy2.mov
[/URL]
 
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