Fastest Compression Techniques

[Chicken Warrior]

Hi all,

I've heard a lot of discussion about the best compression techniques for high quality HD video, but not a lot about getting decent results on the fly.

I need to get close to 8 hours of HD video to DVD as data files (preferably quicktime) ASAP. I exported an hour of 1440x1080 footage last night and it took FOREVER (12 hrs). This was w/ h.264, deinterlacing, rate limited to 5000, 1920x1080 via Mpeg 2 Streamclip. What's worse, it came out glitchy. This was on a dual-core g5 power mac. Am I doing something wrong? I've used this same method before in shorter bursts and it's worked just fine. 1280x720 doesn't seem any faster.


I know there must be a better way, considering a high quality DVD encoded from an equally large HDV file is done in less than an hour on the same computer.

Excuse my ignorance - and thanks in advance for any help.

[koolpenguin89]

Your working with HD footage on a G5, get used to it. DVD encodes take less time because its encoding to SD. Something you wrote didn't make sense though, was your file 1440x1080 or 1920x1080? You wrote both.

Dylan

[EssentialParadox]

Haha, you consider 12 hours as "FOREVER" ?

It usually takes me up to 30 hours to export an SD video into h.264!

If you want it sped up you'll need to network some fast computers and set up a server farm using Compressor.

[MithrilFox]

Hi Chicken...

You're working with HD footage, that's the cost of the quality :hv20-smilie119:

It takes a VERY powerful machine some time to work with lots of HD footage, so any "normal" machine for an average user is going to take much longer.

[Chicken Warrior]

Thanks guys, thanks for laughing :hv20-smilie119:

No, seriously though, as long as I'm not doing anything wrong I'm fine w/ that so it's good to hear I'm not alone. I still don't understand why the first export was glitchy though - playback on QT showed one small portion of video repeated in slow-mo while the audio continued normally. Very weird. I'm trying high-res SD exports now and it's a little faster, but still not as fast as DVD (probably the format).

As for the confusion around resolution, I meant to say the original footage was 1440 and the exported was 1920. I was wondering if it might be slowing things down because it was upgrading. Which brings up another question.

Is there anyway to use mpeg streamclip to export a 1440x1080 while maintaining 16:9 aspect? I seem to remember there was, but can't find it now...

Thanks again.

[jakjak9210]

make sure that you have compressor set to compress using both cores, it isnt by default. that screwed me on my c2d macbook. I dont remember exactly where the setting is, but im sure google will help you on that one.

[iThinkergoiMac]

It's a G5, the processors only have one core each. I imagine dual processor support is enabled by default, but maybe it's the same setting?