Adobe Encore - image unsexily sharp in Blu-Ray build

[aemilia scott]

Hi All,

I'm working on a film festival submission (For my short Best If Used By... maybe you saw the teaser at the Red Open House in February), and I'm authoring a blu-ray for one such festival.

The blu-ray, as played on two different TVs, is like eye-bleedingly sharp. I'm missing the softness of the project as I've been viewing it in various other formats. Does Encore add some automatic sharpening I don't know about? H264 or MPEG2? Does that matter? Is there a bit of final gaussian blur I should be adding somewhere?

Thank you kindly,
aemilia

 

[Les C.]

Have you checked the TVs settings, if they have sharpening or other effects turned on?

 

[Christopher*Seguine]

Are you encoding a 1080p disc from a 1080p source? Whats bitrate are you using?
Make sure the player/monitor is not up-converting and sharpening/aliasing.

Encore's encoder is based on the Mainconcept engine, its fast, but not that good, and you dont' have much control over the output.

Best to use x264 to encode and import the .264 file into encore. Use a -film or -grain profile and a 40mbs bitrate to keep more subtle texture.

 

[aemilia scott]

My Source was a sequence made up of 1080P ProRes files, and some R3Ds as well.

Okay, I'll check the player settings. You think it's best to give Encore an actual rendered out h264 to start with?

By film or grain profile, do you mean I ought to apply a filter in AE or Premiere?

Thanks very much for the suggestions.

 

[Alexander Mejia]

If anything the image should be soft as Premiere will attempt a bilinear scale on the footage by default. Since this is a screener, chances are your audience won't have issues with the footage being a little sharp (as it will be blurred when it's played on a 80+ foot screen).

It's possible that you exported the video into an interlaced format, it will make edges look ailased and sharp and all around ugly. Make sure you stay progressive scan as much as you can throughout the workflow chain.

For the final delivery you will want to make sure you export it at the highest quality possible, meaning making sure all of your footage scales properly. Try contacting a processional finishing house, or a compression expert for final delivery if your publisher doesn't handle the QC on the export.

 

[Les C.]

Are you encoding a 1080p disc from a 1080p source? Whats bitrate are you using?
Make sure the player/monitor is not up-converting and sharpening/aliasing.

Encore's encoder is based on the Mainconcept engine, its fast, but not that good, and you dont' have much control over the output.

Best to use x264 to encode and import the .264 file into encore. Use a -film or -grain profile and a 40mbs bitrate to keep more subtle texture.

What alternative would you recommend for best quality?

I presume outputting to an image sequence and then using which software?

 

[Alexander Mejia]

x264 is (in my opinion) the most efficent software h.264 available today.

X264 requires you to deliver your video in windows via an AVISynth script, or raw 4:2:0 YUV video. It's not the easiest thing in the world to set up, but it's worth it.

Keep in mind that blu-ray has certain framerate and frame size limitations, so you won't be able to direct feed your 5K video into it. You will need to scale it down properly to 1920x1080 4:2:0. I personally prefer Spline36 resize method in AVISynth, but you may want to test a few resizing methods untill you find one that you like. If your footage doesn't have any kind of grain signature to it, you may find banding artifacts. You can either lay another grain pattern on top, or try to dither the signal to prevent it for your final export.

 

[Christopher*Seguine]

My Source was a sequence made up of 1080P ProRes files, and some R3Ds as well.

Sounds like your using PR, render out to a single 1080p quicktime file, make sure max quality option is enabled - DNX, ProRes, or uncompressed YUV would be best.
Check the quicktime to make sure the sharpness issue is not being caused by PR.

You think it's best to give Encore an actual rendered out h264 to start with?

Always.

By film or grain profile, do you mean I ought to apply a filter in AE or Premiere?

No, these are two presets for X264 encoder to simplify fine tuning the encode.


More info for bluray encoding here:
http://www.x264bluray.com/home/1080i-p

X264 requires you to deliver your video in windows via an AVISynth script, or raw 4:2:0 YUV video.

Not for awhile, you can feed x264 with DNX, Uncompressed yuv quicktime, or Prores.

 

[Alexander Mejia]

Not for awhile, you can feed x264 with DNX, Uncompressed yuv quicktime, or Prores.

You're correct, It looks like FFMPEG was updated to input and output Prores now. Thats awesome!

 

[Les C.]

x264 is (in my opinion) the most efficent software h.264 available today.

X264 requires you to deliver your video in windows via an AVISynth script, or raw 4:2:0 YUV video. It's not the easiest thing in the world to set up, but it's worth it.

Keep in mind that blu-ray has certain framerate and frame size limitations, so you won't be able to direct feed your 5K video into it. You will need to scale it down properly to 1920x1080 4:2:0. I personally prefer Spline36 resize method in AVISynth, but you may want to test a few resizing methods untill you find one that you like. If your footage doesn't have any kind of grain signature to it, you may find banding artifacts. You can either lay another grain pattern on top, or try to dither the signal to prevent it for your final export.

Alexander - do you think you could create a video tutorial showing your workflow? Thanks!

you can feed x264 with DNX, Uncompressed yuv quicktime, or Prores.

Christopher - I'd certainly like to see a video tutorial from you, how you pull it all together?

 

[Subhadip Sen]

It would help if you can post a screenshot or two, it is difficult to imagine what "eye bleedingly sharp" means, although the most likely possibility is overdone edge sharpening.

X264 can be achieved from Adobe CS6 in several ways. One is to install X264VFW, browse to Microsoft AVI in CS6 and what it will output is an X264 AVI. You can then extract the .264 stream. (e.g. from the Streams Extractor tool in MeGUI)

Another powerful option (and my preferred option) is to use Debugmode FrameServer in conjunction with the X264 encoder (or GUI of your choice). As the name suggests, it serves or streams frames directly into the encoder, so effectively you get X264 straight from CS6 without an intermediate.

Note that the above two methods are only available on the Windows version.

Of course, you can always render out to uncompressed and then encode an X264 file from your preferred encoder GUI. While inefficient, this is probably the easiest option. In terms of encoder GUIs, MeGUI is the most powerful and configurable. Hybrid is a great option too, and multiplatform, so the best choice for OS X (although the encoder libraries are usually a month behind Linux and Windows). Be sure to use the --bluray-compat string for X264 meant for blu-rays.

 

[Les C.]

It would help if you can post a screenshot or two, it is difficult to imagine what "eye bleedingly sharp" means, although the most likely possibility is overdone edge sharpening.

X264 can be achieved from Adobe CS6 in several ways. One is to install X264VFW, browse to Microsoft AVI in CS6 and what it will output is an X264 AVI. You can then extract the .264 stream. (e.g. from the Streams Extractor tool in MeGUI)

Another powerful option (and my preferred option) is to use Debugmode FrameServer in conjunction with the X264 encoder (or GUI of your choice). As the name suggests, it serves or streams frames directly into the encoder, so effectively you get X264 straight from CS6 without an intermediate.

Note that the above two methods are only available on the Windows version.

Of course, you can always render out to uncompressed and then encode an X264 file from your preferred encoder GUI. While inefficient, this is probably the easiest option. In terms of encoder GUIs, MeGUI is the most powerful and configurable. Hybrid is a great option too, and multiplatform, so the best choice for OS X (although the encoder libraries are usually a month behind Linux and Windows). Be sure to use the --bluray-compat string for X264 meant for blu-rays.

I'm a bit confused? I noticed that 'Debugmode FrameServer' only supports 32 bit versions of Premiere Pro.

There seem to be an overabundance of choices. I'd love to see you demonstrate your workflow in a video?

 

[Subhadip Sen]

I'm a bit confused? I noticed that 'Debugmode FrameServer' only supports 32 bit versions of Premiere Pro.

There seem to be an overabundance of choices. I'd love to see you demonstrate your workflow in a video?

Not sure why it says that, but it does work with 64-bit Premiere Pro, at least til CS5.5. I assume it works with CS6 too because it is listed as a supported plug-in at Adobe's website: http://www.adobe.com/in/products/premiere/extend.displayTab4.html#Workflow.

Here's a short demo I found on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwNvPTHO1HE&feature=plcp (CS5)
And using with MeGUI to encoder X264: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26yqovG1Nzs&feature=plcp (This demo uses Vegas Pro 11, but combine parts of the above demo with this one and you will have enough information to get started. Of course, you don't have to use MeGUI - the same procedure will apply for any software accepting AVI as input)