Export | Glenn Ward

Digitizing your DVD / Film collection, software, settings, exports, codecs, file size etc

The other day a colleague, Ryan Garner! you may have heard him on Simon Mayos drive talking about iPad sales (tech expert) no big deal! said he was thinking about digitizing his DVD collection. It got me thinking, it’s about that time that hard drives are so big and compression routines so efficient that we all should start to think about having our films as files. I have a few DVDs as digital downloads and a few I have converted for my iPhone but with 160gb of ps3 hard drive sitting there doing nothing why haven’t I taken the iPod mentality with my DVDs and got them all on a hard drive. So it’s testing time.

I started by looking at the old iPod exports I had done a few years ago but I was after something that wouldn’t look to degraded on a 40″ TV. I remembered having a download available with my x-men origins DVD I bought recently and so download it to look at the file. It was slightly bigger at 8 x but still what would this look like on a 1080 tv, I was optimistic as it looked pretty good in full screen on the MacBook. So the next step was to play it from the PlayStation. No transfer need, see Media Streaming from an Apple computer to a PS3 using MediaLink…. No worries, here to help!

So, next to look at some software, exports settings and codecs. My preferred DVD ripping software is Handbrake on the mac but have a search on Softpedia or Download.com if you are using a PC for alternatives. Handbrake has a few export presets so I tried a few to compare results. When these exports are played back on laptop there isn’t much in the quality although the files sizes can differ dramatically. I exported another targeting the file size to around 700 mb, this produces a very low bitrate and a noticeable reduction in quality. I next produced an export with a targeted bitrate. Many video files on my laptop had a bitrate of around 1500 so I thought it would be interesting to see what file size this produced. The results were a medium size file, approximate 2 gig and a good quality. The test would be though which files I could play through the TV and still be happy with the quality. My opinion is that if you are after DVD quality videos you need to target the 4 to 5 gig file size with minimum compression. If you are happy to notice slight pixelation in your image and funnily enough this occurs on the flat chunks of colour then go-ahead and start reducing the bitrate.

There Is other software and codecs that do the same sort of job, DIVX has a very good compression routine and produces small file sizes in high quality, just make sure you check what file extensions your devices can playback before you compress your entire collection.

Saving down graphics from powerpoint as a picture, png or jpg

I didn’t realise that this was an unknown to many but often there is a need to pull things out of PowerPoint for alternative uses rather than put them in. This is often the case for me when produce video reports where the findings have been visualised in PowerPoint. So, it’s as simple as this, File > Save As > under the naming form fill change the drop down to png or jpg and hit save, you will then be prompted current slide or every slide, choose every slide and each slide in he deck will be saved as a separate picture or image.

If you just require an element if the slide you can right click and save as image in much the same way.

Top tip,
If your output proposed use is a higher quality than the resolution of the ppt you can often scale up your deck to A3, any vector graphics will be re sized and the quality of the output increased. Go, File > Page Setup and adjust the page accordingly.

Adobe Premiere Pro – Pause video in the timeline by creating a still frame

Unfortunately there is no means to simply pause a video on the first or last frame to get that still to motion effect you often see when multiple interviews are shown on screen at once.

I have found the simplest way to achieve this in Adobe Premiere Pro is to create stills by exporting a tiff then re importing it into you projects portfolio.

Begin by aligning and resizing your clips on the timeline (see how to scale video here) in the order you wish them to appear. At this stage you will see black before and after the clip. Place the playhead on the first frame of the video you would like to begin on a paused / still frame. Choose File > Export and select tiff, be sure on the next drop down to export the tiff in the aspect ratio you are working in. It will make lining the image up a lot easier later. Export as usual using Adobe Media Encoder to the correct folder in your project folder (see setting up a project here) import the file back into your project and place it on the timeline prior to your clip. Adjust the length and play through to see the effect. If you need to scale the tiff do so to complete a smooth still frame to motion effect.

Comparison DV Footage captured using Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro and iMovie

I had presumed that Premiere Pro would capture video from a device in much the same way as Final Cut Pro or iMovie. After having a lot of trouble with the quality of exports using Adobe Media Encoder, I had a look into videos captured by different programs to see if this could be effecting the final output. I decided to look at the same piece of footage from the same DV tape recorded from a Sony HVRDR60. I recorded the video and placed them side by side on the desktop. Below you can see the Premiere Pro Clip (Mov) on the Left and the iMovie clip (DV) on the Right. If I’m honest, I could not see much in it to the naked eye. The contrast might possibly be slightly better on the iMovie clip but even zoomed right in. As there was no differences to see I had a look at the figures, the DV clip captured at a much higher bit rate and produced a higher file size. This would suggest that if there was more movement in the footage then the DV capture would handle this far better than the MOV, although the file size would be almost double.

I am drawing no conclusions from this test apart from, if my premiere pro captured footage are ever not up to scratch then I shall turn back to Final Cut Pro or iMovie to capture my footage. Take from this what you will!

Comparing the .Mov footage and the .Dv

Premiere Pro / iMovie

Adobe Premiere Pro Captured Footage

Format: DV, 720 x 576 (768 x 576), Millions 16-bit Integer (Little Endian), Stereo, 48.000 kHz
FPS: 24.37
Data Size: 45.4 MB
Data Rate: 30.34 Mbit/s