Todd Giglio
September 18th, 2008, 03:47 PM
Hello all,
Thought I'd chime in with a quick review of the Cinema Craft MP encoder now available for the Mac. I am in no way associated with Cinema Craft and I've tried every encoder out there.
So, first of all I've compared Cinema Craft to Compressor's native encoders as well as Squeeze 5.
My first encodes had all other encoders out performing Cinema Craft even when selecting 10 passes (you can select up to 99 passes). HOWEVER, it turns out that this was mostly due to the fact that my DVCPRO HD 720 24P footage didn't look good in the first place (another problem I fixed and will discuss at a later time). Once I brought in ProRes footage then the results were different: It was close but Cinema Craft had the best looking encodes. EXCEPT...
As of right now, CCE MP doesn't like Cineform encoded files (something I've brought to the attention of both Cineform and Omni-Craft. And another issue I noticed that CCE MP did was on one specific shot in my film. To set it up, a truck pulls up and a man gets out and runs down the side of a building as the camera cranes over the truck. In the shot there is a semi truck where the truck has vertical lines going down the whole length of the truck. With the CCE MP encodes there is a strange moire pattern happening as the camera moves. This does not happen with either Compressor's native encoder or Squeeze 5. I tried various encoding options (2:3 pulldown rather than 3:2; top field first (there is no option to select Progressive with CCE MP though it does work with 24p footage), etc. I did send out a request with Omni-Craft to get the optimal settings for a true 24p DVD so hopefully I run the test again and give my results.
Now about breaking down the compressed footage:
In all encodes I had to apply gamma correction of .82 (an Apple FCP gamma problem that has been discussed but applying .82 correction pretty much puts the footage back to where it should be and I have a properly calibrated Matrox MXO box hooked up to a second 23" ACD).
About the encodes:
The CCE MP encodes resolved the jaggies (stair stepping) issues slightly better than Compressor's own encoder as well as Squeeze 5. CCE MP also tries to deal with the gamma issues but I found I still needed to apply gamma correction (I do wish that Apple dealt with this issue and truely made the footage you are editing WYSIWYG as opposed to trying to adjust the gamma. Until I came across this issue I couldn't for the life of me figure out why my encodes all came out darker than what I was seeing. I also found that CCE MP also helped resolve some 'red color blocking' issues that is some have complained about.
I also wish the Cinema-Craft had a better manual. There are a lot of settings you can adjust but it doesn't really go into when you should use them and why you should use them. Again, I requested some info and if I get that back I will share it. I really wish someone would come up with a 'cook book' for best setting when it comes to DVD encoding. I think I finally found a method that works for me. Here it is:
I exported my FCP project (2 hours; DVCPRO HD 720 p 24pN) into ProRes HQ upressed to 1920x1080 24p. I opened up Compressor and added the newly compressed film (I also found the exported the film into a self contained Quicktime movie gave me less errors as opposed to directly exported via Compressor from FCP). I then applied the Compressor Best DVD settings for 120 min movie (average bitrate was 5000 but it really should have been around 4750 in order to properly fit the whole movie on the DVD). Compressor's native encoder automatically knows if the footage is true 24p and applies the proper settings (CCE doesn't do this as far as I can tell). I then applied gamma correction of .82 and processed. The resulting file was nearly identical to the quality of the original footage in both color and sharpness. Enough rambling.
Even though I found CCE to have the better encodes I chose Compressor's native encoder due to Cineform issues as well as the moire pattern only present on the CCE encodes.
I know this was a rather long and probably not a 'proper' review, but I figured I'd share my countless hours of testing with you all.
Todd
Thought I'd chime in with a quick review of the Cinema Craft MP encoder now available for the Mac. I am in no way associated with Cinema Craft and I've tried every encoder out there.
So, first of all I've compared Cinema Craft to Compressor's native encoders as well as Squeeze 5.
My first encodes had all other encoders out performing Cinema Craft even when selecting 10 passes (you can select up to 99 passes). HOWEVER, it turns out that this was mostly due to the fact that my DVCPRO HD 720 24P footage didn't look good in the first place (another problem I fixed and will discuss at a later time). Once I brought in ProRes footage then the results were different: It was close but Cinema Craft had the best looking encodes. EXCEPT...
As of right now, CCE MP doesn't like Cineform encoded files (something I've brought to the attention of both Cineform and Omni-Craft. And another issue I noticed that CCE MP did was on one specific shot in my film. To set it up, a truck pulls up and a man gets out and runs down the side of a building as the camera cranes over the truck. In the shot there is a semi truck where the truck has vertical lines going down the whole length of the truck. With the CCE MP encodes there is a strange moire pattern happening as the camera moves. This does not happen with either Compressor's native encoder or Squeeze 5. I tried various encoding options (2:3 pulldown rather than 3:2; top field first (there is no option to select Progressive with CCE MP though it does work with 24p footage), etc. I did send out a request with Omni-Craft to get the optimal settings for a true 24p DVD so hopefully I run the test again and give my results.
Now about breaking down the compressed footage:
In all encodes I had to apply gamma correction of .82 (an Apple FCP gamma problem that has been discussed but applying .82 correction pretty much puts the footage back to where it should be and I have a properly calibrated Matrox MXO box hooked up to a second 23" ACD).
About the encodes:
The CCE MP encodes resolved the jaggies (stair stepping) issues slightly better than Compressor's own encoder as well as Squeeze 5. CCE MP also tries to deal with the gamma issues but I found I still needed to apply gamma correction (I do wish that Apple dealt with this issue and truely made the footage you are editing WYSIWYG as opposed to trying to adjust the gamma. Until I came across this issue I couldn't for the life of me figure out why my encodes all came out darker than what I was seeing. I also found that CCE MP also helped resolve some 'red color blocking' issues that is some have complained about.
I also wish the Cinema-Craft had a better manual. There are a lot of settings you can adjust but it doesn't really go into when you should use them and why you should use them. Again, I requested some info and if I get that back I will share it. I really wish someone would come up with a 'cook book' for best setting when it comes to DVD encoding. I think I finally found a method that works for me. Here it is:
I exported my FCP project (2 hours; DVCPRO HD 720 p 24pN) into ProRes HQ upressed to 1920x1080 24p. I opened up Compressor and added the newly compressed film (I also found the exported the film into a self contained Quicktime movie gave me less errors as opposed to directly exported via Compressor from FCP). I then applied the Compressor Best DVD settings for 120 min movie (average bitrate was 5000 but it really should have been around 4750 in order to properly fit the whole movie on the DVD). Compressor's native encoder automatically knows if the footage is true 24p and applies the proper settings (CCE doesn't do this as far as I can tell). I then applied gamma correction of .82 and processed. The resulting file was nearly identical to the quality of the original footage in both color and sharpness. Enough rambling.
Even though I found CCE to have the better encodes I chose Compressor's native encoder due to Cineform issues as well as the moire pattern only present on the CCE encodes.
I know this was a rather long and probably not a 'proper' review, but I figured I'd share my countless hours of testing with you all.
Todd