Best Compression for Projection?
by daniel wasserman
on
Feb 6, 2009 at 7:13:17 pm
Hi -
We just completed a doc and while waiting to hear back from the big festivals, we've had some invites to screen in smaller venues that unfortunately don't have HD Cam. Our final digital output is DVCPro HD 720.
I read in a forum that it might work for DVCPro HD 720 better than just using Compressor defaults, but it was a fairly old forum. Any help is greatly appreciated!
Re: Best Compression for Projection? by Max Kovalsky on Feb 6, 2009 at 8:44:38 pm
Blu-ray is your best bet. Many festivals are already accepting submissions on the format and "On Location Memphis" will be actually screening on Blu-ray and 35mm exclusively during the fest.
Re: Best Compression for Projection? by Noah Kadner on Feb 7, 2009 at 12:26:19 am
I'd go DVCAM- I've seen DVDs stutter and halt at festivals- ugly. Also seen DV tapes do the same too because the projection DV player has seriously dirty heads. It's a shame that so many 'festivals' go the cheap route to projection. Nothing beats a nice Beta SP, Digibeta, HDCAM or 35mm/16mm projection. At least they're not going VHS...
Re: Best Compression for Projection? by Terry Mikkelsen on Feb 7, 2009 at 12:47:48 am
The "bonsai" method sounds interesting, but I am skeptical. I will try a few scenes tonight and see what it does. Usually, for HDV footage, I edit as HDV, export a reference movie, and then transcode with Compressor. (Notice I said edit as HDV, not compositing.)
Re: Best Compression for Projection? by Terry Mikkelsen on Feb 10, 2009 at 5:58:29 pm
My gut was right. I cannot find settings or workflow that is worth the increased compression time. By going to another format/timeline you can get different looks, but nothing that really pops out. There are slight differences, which could be perceived by some as better, but to others maybe it is worse. And the differences are definitly slight! Even at 200%, you need to examine frame by frame for the differences, nothing that is worth noting at 100% in real time.
With all of this in mind, along with the almost 2X time it takes to render/compress, I can't justify it at all.
p.s. I didn't like any of the results when I applied gaussian blur, ranging in values from .1 to 1.
