Sorenson squeeze and premiere workflow..

T

truehuss

Well-known member
ALRIGHT, i'm trying to compress a quicktime file I rendered out of premiere pro (QT-Animation) and using sorenson squeeze I cant figure out what format to use to keep it at high quality.Someone told me H.264 but from what "Audience-Format" section in Sorenson I cant tell because there are a few. My project is a 720pn-29.97fps hd FILE shot from a panasonic hpx170. My quicktime came out to be about 14GB for an 11 minute video with effects. When I encoded squeeze In what I thought was the right format it loses quality... Anyone know any tutorials using Sorenson and maybe some dvcproHD footy?

btw is the apple mpeg4 codec the H.264 codec? are they the same? Should I be using Mainconcept HD?

can anybody help me out?
 
Why don't you use Adobe Media Encoder? Squeeze and Adobe licence and use the same Mainconcept engine . This will also save you time from rendering a QT-animation mov intermediate

Apple h.264 is a bit less efficient that Mainconcept's flavour of h.264. You are limited to "main" profile only, and it doesn't use CABAC
 
ok.. let me get this.. I was told that if I was to export a H.264 through premiere that I would get the dreaded gamma effect. So what I was also told, was to export from AME a QT animation file, then run it through sorenson (because of better quality) as a H.264. Well, so far not good. My results and still kinda blotchy and nothing like the 720pn file I shot from the Hpx170.

All I want to do is get a good quality HD file , exported to H.264 (for lower file size) .

would I get that by just coming straight out of premiere?? I gotta say, doing research all I hear is negatives about AME and Raves about sorenson.. so how are they both using the same things?

any help would be appreciated.. seriously, I'm pulling my f'in hair out!
 
truehuss said:
ok.. let me get this.. I was told that if I was to export a H.264 through premiere that I would get the dreaded gamma effect. So what I was also told, was to export from AME a QT animation file, then run it through sorenson (because of better quality) as a H.264. Well, so far not good. My results and still kinda blotchy and nothing like the 720pn file I shot from the Hpx170.

All I want to do is get a good quality HD file , exported to H.264 (for lower file size) .

would I get that by just coming straight out of premiere?? I gotta say, doing research all I hear is negatives about AME and Raves about sorenson.. so how are they both using the same things?

any help would be appreciated.. seriously, I'm pulling my f'in hair out!
Click to expand...


If you're talking about the quicktime gamma shift bug, that occurs only in .mov wrapped videos, and only in certain circumstances. It's decoder dependent. Export using .mp4 , and you would avoid that entirely

Unless there is some other bug that you are referring to.

For encoding h.264, they both are front ends for the Mainconcept AVC SDK. PP is based on the 7.4 SDK, sorensen 6 is based on the 7.5 SDK, but everything is identical in terms of quality. Identical.

AME sucks for resizing, and deinterlacing, but the mainconcept h.264 encoder gives decent quality

Use a higher bitrate and better quality settings if you're still not getting good results. You have to post more specific info, if you want specfic help e.g. what bitrate, settings etc are you using?

EDIT: if you are using anamorphic P2 like DVCPRO, it's possible that upon resize to square pixel 1280x720, that squeeze uses a better scaling algorith, like lanczos. But this is a separate issue from the encoder. The encoders themselve give identical quality with same settings because they are same.
 
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EDIT: if you are using anamorphic P2 like DVCPRO, it's possible that upon resize to square pixel 1280x720, that squeeze uses a better scaling algorith, like lanczos. But this is a separate issue from the encoder. The encoders themselve give identical quality with same settings because they are same.

Hey, I am using DVCproHD footage (hpx170--shot in 720pN- 29.97) Now as far as the rest you might as well be talking jupitarian..lol.. I didnt understand a word.. (some)

But basically, here is my retry settings.. thanks for the help bro..

1260580695.jpg


I dont know about these, I'm just throwing sh*t at teh wall and seeing what sticks.. please help

btw, I just did another quicktime file from the same source and what yesterday was 14GB is now 47GB?? I dont know what the hell I'm doing.. But theres gotta be a setting if I was to say OR better yet, if it were YOU, and you have 720pN footage, 29.97 dvcpro HD, your client wants to play it back on a laptop and show it through a small projector, what settings would YOU use.

Thanks again
 
truehuss said:
EDIT: if you are using anamorphic P2 like DVCPRO, it's possible that upon resize to square pixel 1280x720, that squeeze uses a better scaling algorith, like lanczos. But this is a separate issue from the encoder. The encoders themselve give identical quality with same settings because they are same.

Hey, I am using DVCproHD footage (hpx170--shot in 720pN- 29.97) Now as far as the rest you might as well be talking jupitarian..lol.. I didnt understand a word.. (some)

But basically, here is my retry settings.. thanks for the help bro..

[snip]

I dont know about these, I'm just throwing sh*t at teh wall and seeing what sticks.. please help

btw, I just did another quicktime file from the same source and what yesterday was 14GB is now 47GB?? I dont know what the hell I'm doing.. But theres gotta be a setting if I was to say OR better yet, if it were YOU, and you have 720pN footage, 29.97 dvcpro HD, your client wants to play it back on a laptop and show it through a small projector, what settings would YOU use.

Thanks again
Click to expand...

1) How powerful is that laptop? Find out. Can it even play 720p/29.97 h.264 or will it drop frames?

2) What projector? What connections? Is it HD?

Assuming the above are ok, Mainconcept AVC will give you slightly better quality at the same bitrate compared to Apple. BUT, if the laptop is MAC and you are using MAC software, it might have difficulty playing the Mainconcept high profile if you use Quicktime, for example. If it is a MAC, use Quicktime h.264 profile to encode

Change profile to "high", level to "4.0", bitrate encoding to "2pass", target bitrate to around 10Mbps , Max to 20Mbps. Keep frame rate 29.97. If you want slightly better encoding efficiency you can increase the keyframe interval (default for mainconcpet is 33)

Filesize = bitrate x running time , so if you need a specific filesize you can adjust the bitrate. I just suggested around 10Mb/s as a starting point. Higher means less lossy, lower means more lossy.

If it were me, I would actually export a lossless intermediate, use avisynth to resize, and x264 to encode
 
thanks bro.. no mac.. PC based. He did state the laptop was able to handle it BUT I may not be too sure. so based on that, is there some standard settings I should do for one that is not HD (just in case) but still look good?

thanks ALOT!!

and sorry for all the questions.. But its hard to find specific info based on my situation.
 
If in doubt at all, use quicktime h.264 and .mov. In some scenarios you will get a gamma shift depending on decoder used , but quicktime h.264 is less decoder heavy, and more suitable for weaker cpus (i.e it's less compressed, and uses fewer advanced features of the h.264 standard). One of the worst things would be choppy playback from the laptop during the presentation. I would test it out beforehand for piece of mind.

You don't have to encode the entire project, just a minute or so to do some tests
 
Sorry what I mean for an SD project is basically use the same settings, but just resize to a 16:9 SD resolution like 720x404 which is a bit off 1.778 AR. Even an older single core laptop should be able to play h.264 in SD. You could lower the bitrate to 4 or 5 Mb/s then. Again , do some short tests, and if it still looks "bad" up the bitrate a bit. There is no fixed recipe, and different types of content may require different settings and bitrate for a certain quality level. If something else is drastically wrong, then report back with new info and screenshots
 
PDR I wish I could buy you a beer bro..you saved my azz!! your the man..

seriously though, I really appreciated ya help. everything worked out great.
 
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