Best DVD/BluRay from RED Need Advice

[Douglas Underdahl]

Hello all -

Just finished edit on a short film shot with my Epic X at 4kHD. Transcoded in Redcine to ProRes 422 1080, edit in FCP7, exported to 422 1080.

Now I've been asked to supply DVDs and Blu Rays and I'm wondering what Redusers are doing? Usually I tell customers that I can upload to Vimeo and/or Youtube in full HD and that pleases most, or send master on hard drive, or if it's short, Dropbox. I haven't burned a DVD in years and only a few Blu Rays. Did the usual for me for a few DVDS, which is Apple Compressor (90 minute Best Setting) to DVD Studio. Results are disappointing, mostly because of jagged edges, stair stepping aliasing. I'm usually sad after viewing any SD version of an HD original, but the jagged edges - even on the symbols on the menu - are lousy.

Just wondering what else to do, such as Toast, etc. Also looking for Blu Ray advice.

Thanks in advance
Doug

 

[Marc Wielage]

How do you know the monitor isn't exaggerating the problems?

Is there even a market for standard def anymore? How does it look on YouTube and Vimeo, just normal HD on a normal laptop or tablet? That I would worry about.

I'm not a fan of downrezzing from Red to ProRes 422, but I think 444 can hold up pretty well. There's some antialiasing tweaks you can do in Resolve, but to me it would be a shot-by-shot kind of thing.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Hi Doug. Here's what I would do if you have time, inclination to do so.

First, start with as high quality a master file as you can. I generally don't like to go lower than ProResHQ unless there is a specific reason. If your encoder can take DPX sequence, that may be a better option. The better quality going into the encoder, the cleaner the results.

Next, you'll want to become a bit of an encoding artist. Some things will require more bits, others less. So, you'll need to test different settings to find out what works best for certain scenes. So rather than one long encode, you may need to do this in segments. I used to use multiple encoders such as Bitvise back in the day. Not sure if any of those companies are around now. So I would test Compressor, Adobe Media Encoder, Episode, Sorenson Squeeze, etc on the Mac and there are a bunch on the PC. Just beware of companies that pop up in encoding software searches. A lot of them are just waiting to install malware on your computer.

For Blu-Ray, if you can get your hands on Adobe Encore, that may be your best bet. FCPX/Compressor can do it but it's not really an authoring environment, more like a one-off solution. Toast has some capability but I have found recent version is very flaky.

As the industry moves away from disc formats, the tools to create them slowly fade away into oblivion. When budget allows it may be better to just have a company do it with their fancy tools.

 

[Douglas Underdahl]

Thanks Steve. That was helpful.

 

[Matthew Riggieri]

In compressor, set scaling to Best under frame controls. Uses much better scaling algorithm. None of the jagged edges you speak of.

 

[Douglas Underdahl]

Will try Best Scaling - thanks Matt.