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MillimeterMatrox CompressHD Test Drive: Mac
Aug 24, 2009 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer
Figure 7. Apple Compressor Better and Best on the left and in the center, respectively; Matrox CompressHD on the right.
De-interlacing Quality
De-interlacing quality is essential to all producers working with interlaced video, and CompressHD proved very competitive in my comparisons with Compressor. As most readers know, Compressor offers three de-interlacing modes: Fast, Better, and Best. The time difference between Fast and Better isn’t that significant, so few users use Fast.
Best uses a technology called Optical Flow from Apple Shake, and it’s very aptly named, offering exceptionally high quality. Unfortunately, it’s too slow for most real productions, since it can extend encoding times by a factor of 40X-50X. As a practical matter, Better is the most apt comparison between Compressor and any other encoder.
In my tests, CompressHD was slightly behind Compressor’s Best quality, and on par with Better. Basically, if you’re working with interlaced source footage, CompressHD should deliver very good-quality progressive streaming footage.
Figure 8. Footage encoded with CompressHD successfully imported into Encore, albeit at 15Mbps.
Blu-ray Output
If you read Matrox’s user boards, you’ve probably noted that CompressHD has had issues producing Blu-ray footage compatible with Adobe Encore, and obviously, any Mac H.264 encoding tool needs to output video compatible with Final Cut Pro 7 and Compressor 3.5’s Blu-ray authoring. I was pretty psyched to test both functions, but my first encoding run, at 30Mbps, wouldn’t work with either Encore or Final Cut Pro 7.
I queried my Matrox contact, who confirmed that the old bug that hindered operation with Encore had crept back into the software. He mentioned it was a “header” issue and advised me to try encoding at 15Mbps, which I did, and it worked in both programs. In closing, he promised that the final release will have this fixed.
Deadlines being deadlines, I had to hand this in without testing the final release, but I will do so when it’s available and will ask millimeter’s already overworked staff to update the story. Overall, quickly producing high-quality H.264 video will become increasingly critical to most producers over the next few years, and CompressHD looks like a great tool for the job.
Continue the discussion on Crosstalk the Millimeter Forum.