Compressor 2 PROBLEM with dissolves

[Hans Damkoehler]

Hey folks,

I'm exporting a 17 minute piece with Compressor 2. I'm using a 2 pass method with 6.6 as my constant bit rate and 7.8 as my max bit rate. It looks pretty darn good until I get into the dissolve fest at the end. Once I hit it I see a ton of artifacting throughout the dissolves.

I've encountered this problem before with C2 and was wondering if anyone has any suggestions ... my Producer is NOT happy about it and I need to delver something pristine!

Time is of the essence for me so if you have thougts, suggestions PLEASE post!

[Greg Boston]

Hans, this has been noted before when doing MPEG2 stuff. Go back into your sequence within FCP and set 'compression markers' around your transitions. This will tell the MPEG encoder to render these sections as all I frames instead of a GOP structure. That's primarily what the compression marker is for.

-gb-

[Nate Schmidt]

You can also add compression markers directly in compressor just by hitting m in the timeline. Just thought I'd throw that out there to see if it fit your workflow.

[Hans Damkoehler]

Originally Posted by Greg Boston

Go back into your sequence within FCP and set 'compression markers' around your transitions.

-gb-

Thanks for the reply.

I've got an effects-laden 17 minute piece ... that seems like a ton of tedious work. Have any of you guys found a good workflow for this ... like doing a test compression and only using the markers on poor transitions?

I've never used compression markers and am interested in real-world exmples.

Thanks again!

[Hans Damkoehler]

Originally Posted by Hans Damkoehler

I've never used compression markers and am interested in real-world examples.

Well, since Compression Markers are new to me I did some research on them and thought I'd share ....

I was having trouble exporting my sequence through Compressor 2 out of Final Cut. It was crashing the program. In order to solve this I exported the sequence as a QuickTime movie. Wht I NEGLECTED to do (unknowingly) was to export MARKERS at the same time.

Further research tells me that Final Cut AUTOMATICALLY inserts Compression Markers at each transition (a real time saver!) ... I was effectively eliminating these when I exported out the Quicktime movie.

So, I'm going to try a re-compression after re-exporting my sequence WITH compression markers. Will report back.

Hopefully this will help others who have fallen into this unware ....

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by Hans Damkoehler

Further research tells me that Final Cut AUTOMATICALLY inserts Compression Markers at each transition (a real time saver!)

That's what I read as well yesterday. In researching your marker issue, I found another tidbit in the Compressor manual that answered another question I had. So it was a good learning day for me.

Hans, you can always set temorary in/out points on a portion of your sequence that was being troublesome and do a test render/compression. That way you get to see the results of your experiments faster. When you get it to look good, remove the in/out points and render/compress the whole thing.

-gb-

[Dave Perry]

This is interesting. I checked the export settings in FCP and by default, Export All Markers is set when exporting an FCP movie. Hans, were you deselecting markers when exporting?

[Hans Damkoehler]

Originally Posted by Dave Perry

This is interesting. I checked the export settings in FCP and by default, Export All Markers is set when exporting an FCP movie. Hans, were you deselecting markers when exporting?

Hey Dave,

Thanks for the note ... actually, for me (on both my systems) the default is NONE. Not sure why yours is different but that how it is for me. I WILL be changing that though from here on out! Would have saved me a lot of trouble in the past.

For further insight, the cool plug-in "TWIXTOR" used to crash Final Cut everytime I tried a Compressor export of the timeline. I resorted to exporting the timeline first as a Quicktime movie then doing my compression ... never evn knowing about the automatic compression markers. I honestly thought that the problems with dissolves were just a "Compressor 2" foible.

[Gomer Thomas]

is anybody can tell me what's wrong with compressor now its kept on crashing
can someone help/