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Text jagged when converting from anamorphic to square pixels

I've been banging my head against this for a long time now, haven't been able to find a true solution online. I have a book trailer destined for the web shot in anamorphic DV (DVX100 24p with squeeze setting). True resolution is 720x480 with a NTSC CCIR DV 16:9 pixel aspect ratio. All my text looks beautiful in Final Cut Pro 6, nice subpixel rendering, really smooth. However, when I bring it over to Compressor 3, the text gets aliased and jagged. It happens because I'm telling Compressor to convert the video to square pixels at 853x480, but I haven't been able to come up with a solution. If I export at the correct pixel aspect ratio, the text looks great, but certain video players will play it squeezed, so I need to be able to export to square pixels. But I can't figure out a way to get rid of the aliasing. I've tried anti-aliasing, changing the detail settings, down-resing to 720x405, but nothing seems to fix it.

It's maddening, because I know this is a common problem, but none of the obvious solutions seem to make sense. Any advice you could give would be awesome.

The source file is 720x480 CCIR DV 16:9 at 23.98. My Compressor settings are as follows:
File Extension: mov
Estimated file size: unknown
Audio Encoder
AAC, Stereo (L R), 48.000 kHz
Video Encoder
Format: QT
Width: 853
Height: 480
Pixel aspect ratio: Square
Crop: None
Padding: None
Frame rate: (100% of source)
Selected: 23.976
Frame Controls On:
Retiming: (Fast) Nearest Frame
Resize Filter: Nearest Pixel
Deinterlace Filter: Fast (Line Averaging)
Adaptive Details: On
Antialias: 0
Detail Level: 0
Field Output: Progressive
Codec Type: H.264
Multi-pass: On, frame reorder: On
Pixel depth: 24
Spatial quality: 49
Min. Spatial quality: 25
Key frame interval: 24
Temporal quality: 50
Min. temporal quality: 25

15" Unibody Macbook Pro (Late 2008); 32 GB iPhone 3GS), Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Mar 6, 2010 8:38 AM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Mar 6, 2010 11:21 AM

+*Resize Filter: Nearest Pixel*+
+*Deinterlace Filter: Fast (Line Averaging)*+

Try changing these settings to better. The best setting will definitely look better than the fast settings. If your very picky about how your video looks and have the time to kill try best.

Since your using multi-pass for the h.264 frame control, frame control will be read/used for each pass, adding (a lot) to the time of the encoding. One work around is to use Pro res to encode the video using frame control and then link (target) that encoding to the h.264 setting with frame control off.

Here's an excellent tutorial on using the link (target) function in Compressor:

http://pixelcorps.cachefly.net/macbreak-154-540p-h264.mov

One thing you need to set for the h.264 encoding that isn't mention in the above tutorial. In the Inspector/Geometry window for the h.264 encoding you need to set the video dimensions. You'll notice it is set to Automatic with no video dimensions. For some reason you'll get an error if the video dimensions aren't set.
1 reply
Question marked as Best reply

Mar 6, 2010 11:21 AM in response to Montag451

+*Resize Filter: Nearest Pixel*+
+*Deinterlace Filter: Fast (Line Averaging)*+

Try changing these settings to better. The best setting will definitely look better than the fast settings. If your very picky about how your video looks and have the time to kill try best.

Since your using multi-pass for the h.264 frame control, frame control will be read/used for each pass, adding (a lot) to the time of the encoding. One work around is to use Pro res to encode the video using frame control and then link (target) that encoding to the h.264 setting with frame control off.

Here's an excellent tutorial on using the link (target) function in Compressor:

http://pixelcorps.cachefly.net/macbreak-154-540p-h264.mov

One thing you need to set for the h.264 encoding that isn't mention in the above tutorial. In the Inspector/Geometry window for the h.264 encoding you need to set the video dimensions. You'll notice it is set to Automatic with no video dimensions. For some reason you'll get an error if the video dimensions aren't set.

Text jagged when converting from anamorphic to square pixels

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