Final Cut Pro to convention-safe MPEG2

Org Profile · Post by **LantisEscudo** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 10:34 pm

Compressor seems to hate me, too. I've pretty much given up on it as an AMV encoder, and have been using QTPro->Uncompressed AVI->TMPEGEnc to generate my MPEG2s.

Here's a particularly ugly example frame comparison from my latest video (shrunk to not break the table), the left is Compressor's output, the right is TMPEGEnc's after converting the MOV to an uncompressed AVI:

No clue what causes it, but this is the third or fourth video that Compressor has bungled like this.

YouTube · Post by **Kionon** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 10:38 pm

Why are you using MPEG2, DVD Production? I usually use h264 for distribution and lossless copies for contests.

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 11:24 pm

Kionon wrote:Why are you using MPEG2, DVD Production? I usually use h264 for distribution and lossless copies for contests.

Some cons specifically request MPEG2 submissions - well, AFAIK most of them i've submitted to actually require some sort of MPEG2 compression.

elvirasweeney · Post by **elvirasweeney** » Mon Mar 05, 2007 1:45 pm

First off, I love Shazzy's guide! Can't thank you enough, Shazzy! And I'd love to see Kionon's guide. The more the merrier. The more knowledge, the better. Bring it on! We need more information for Mac users!

Regarding MPEG-2: This probably won't help, but I'll throw it out there just in case. The little cheapie app VisualHub makes MPEG-2 files. Could you export out of Final Cut using Quicktime Conversion (uncompressed format of your choice) and then convert with VisualHub? Would the quality be acceptable?

Shazzy · Post by **Shazzy** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 3:31 pm

elvirasweeney wrote:First off, I love Shazzy's guide! Can't thank you enough, Shazzy! And I'd love to see Kionon's guide. The more the merrier. The more knowledge, the better. Bring it on! We need more information for Mac users!

Regarding MPEG-2: This probably won't help, but I'll throw it out there just in case. The little cheapie app VisualHub makes MPEG-2 files. Could you export out of Final Cut using Quicktime Conversion (uncompressed format of your choice) and then convert with VisualHub? Would the quality be acceptable?

You could, but why you'd want to...since Compressor is, hands down, the best MPEG-2 compressor for Mac. Compressor uses a better compression algorithm than anything else, which means same visual quality in a smaller file. And it comes free with FCP =p