If you're stuck with Blu-Ray, definitely use
professional optical media. Taiyo Yuden is the
gold standard. They make DVDs under their own
brand as well as others. For Blu-Ray, I think
Taiyo Yuedn have an exclusive with JVC. I go to
supermediastore.com, they have the widest selection of media I've seen.
///////////////
For H.264 encoding on Windows, Adobe Media
Encoder is the best I've worked with. Definitely
better than the Sony AVC codec, which seems to
have issues with properly converting/flagging
Studio IRE 16-235 levels, leading to contrast
issues in playback. Quicktime has notorious
problems with this as well, sometimes encoding or
playing back MP4s at the wrong levels.
//////////////
Aaron
/////////////
At 12/13/2013, you wrote:
The problem for the filmmaker in the digital age
is that there is absolutely no standardization
between different screening venues. Some folks
want files, but only take certain codecs and
containers (and different ones at different
places, of course...). And some folks want
physical media: tapes (still a variety of
formats) or discs... It all depends on what tech
the venue has invested in, and what their
'projectionist'/tech-person can handle (and,
alas, such folks are often less than competent
to deal with any kind of curveball*).
Unlike todd, I haven't had any problems with
Blu-Ray, and I'd guess that Blu-Ray players are
pretty common now. With any home-burned optical
discs, the quality of the media matters A LOT.
NEVER buy cheapo generic blank discs. Folks
making shorts should keep in mind that up to a
half-hour or so of material in MPEG2 will fit on
a standard blank DVD5 in Blu-Ray format, and
will play-back in any DVD player. If you do
that, get some of the premium Taiyo-Yuden blanks
from one of the internet outlets, and you should
get good reliable results. (And always burn at the slowest available speed.)
At least Blu-Ray is better than the
least-common-denominator default pretty much
EVERYBODY can handle: a standard DVD (meh). And
with Blu-Ray, as long as your disc plays at all,
there's really no way the folks on the other end can screw it up.
Of course, if you're dealing with venues that
take files, todd's thumb-drive idea is a great
way to go. Flash memory just keeps getting
cheaper. (32GB USB thumbs can be had now for
just over $20... cheaper than 'professional'
tape stock, not to mention film prints...)
So, I would say that an artisanal filmmaker needs:
Decent software and hardware to author and
burn Blu-Rays (and if you're doing the
short-running-time BR on DVD5, you don't even need a Blu-Ray burner.
Proper software to transcode your digital
'master' into whatever format a venue desires.
On a Mac, that means a combination of Apple
Compressor and the old-reliable (and free)
MPEG-Streamclip. On a PC, I don't know... (Aaron??)
I suspect some of Moira's specific problem is
that she's working in Avid (on a PC, I'm
guessing), which uses some sort of proprietary
codec and offers limited options for output to
standardized formats. The closest we seem to be
to a high quality file standard for distribution
is ProRes 422. And as recently noted here,
ProRes isn't available on PCs. Given what
production houses charge for transfers, it might
behoove PC based folks to invest in a used older
Mac Pro (~$500) if only to make ProRes files.
Finally, if anybody wants you to send files via
the Net, they'll probably want some kind of
h.264 coded file (in either a Quicktime or .mp4
container). It's very compressed and lossy, of
course, but it can look damn good if you encode
it right. The thing to note here, is that
different h.264 software codecs are not created
equal, and Apple's version is notoriously meh.
What you want is the open-source x264 encoder.
(x264 is not a codec, it's just a means of
encoding h.264). There's lots of settings inside
this thing, most of which I don't understand,
but if you set the right frame-rate, choose one
of the higher quality presets ('Slower' or 'Very
Slow') and throw in the 'use 3rd pass' option
for good measure, you'll get the best
visual-quality-to-smaller-file size ratio in
existence. And AFAIK, you can use x264 in the PC
version of MPEG Streamclip, (and probably a
variety of other PC-based shareware or freeware converters as well.)
djt
* I will never forget my experience at a
good-sized film festival, in a city of some 1.3
million residents, at which the organizers had
hired a "professional" video projectionist.
There were three pieces screening simultaneously
in adjacent screening rooms of the rented
multiplex, and EACH ONE was screening in the
wrong aspect ratio: the ones that should have
been 4:3 were stretched out to 16:9, and the
ones which should have been 16:9 were squeezed into 4:3.
On Dec 12, 2013, at 11:25 PM, todd eacrett wrote:
From a presentation perspective, I'd nix both
of the rapidly obsolescing HDCam and Blu-ray
in favour of a ProRes file. Blu-ray is a pita
for screenings. I've had discs that tested
fine one day then wouldn't read the next. Even
with a BR data drive and the software it's a
slow and potentially lossy process to rip it back to a file.
If you're sending out a physical object
(hard-drive/memory stick) with files on it,
consider including multiple versions with
different resolutions and/or bitrates. When I
have the time to re-encode a file I'm pretty
careful, but if I have to do so an hour before a screening, not so much.
You don't mention the running time, but a file
that can be up//downloaded is theoretically
cheaper/faster than shipping a tape or disc. At
least it pushes the economic and environmental
costs of the server farms onto the next generation.
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Aaron F. Ross
Digital Arts Guild
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