Deliver in 1080i 50 DNxHD 185 4.2.2 ?

I put togeter a timelapse using Blender. Now I am asked to deliver it (to a local tv-station) in the following format:
1080i 50 DNxHD 185 4.2.2 (DNxHD 120 MXF)
QuickTime-file

  • My file is set up as 1920x1280… Reading upon 1080i I see it is another proportion. How to solve this?
  • I see if I choose xvid I can choose DNxHD as codec. What settings do I use for bitrate / rate / packetsize ? Is it a good idea to do this in Blender? Or better I export it as image seq and export from another program (which) ?
    Thanks

Personally I would use an outside program, especially if your output is meant for professional use.

Davinci Resolve lite is a nice little program that can export all kinds of different formats, and it’s free.

1 Like

I also recommend Davinci Resolve, you will probably need to install the DNxHD codec first…

Thanks! What is the reason for not going with Blender? If using Davinci do I have to start all over again, or is there a way to transfer?
Of course I want the best quality possible, but I cant put that much more work into it. Its a bit of arty documentation using the timelapse tecnique, so I can live with colors being a bit off etc…

You don’t need to start over, just render your job in blender, import the result in davinci and deliver it as DNxHD.

You must however find out what format can be imported to davinci. I recommend to try PNG or TIFF sequence.

Thanks, the project consists of a lot of pngs and a couple of mov files that are synched (stretced, transformed) to a sound track (mp3). Seems like going back a step to export it again as png, but maybe its the best way?

  • Installed the dnxhd codec and tried to export to dnxhd using Blender but get an error (error message seems to just state the export format)

PNG is lossless format, so you won’t loose any of the quality when exporting it as PNG. 8 bit would be sufficient I think.
I don’t know how to setup the output to 1080i 50 DNxHD 185 4.2.2 in Blender but in DaVinci it should be pretty easy (there is probably a preset for that).

Note: I am not sure if Davinci can import pngs, if not, try tiffs…

Hi semlan,

try MPEG Streamclip.
http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-win.html

All the settings you need (see Screenshot)
http://www.pasteall.org/pic/82771

Try this one for lossles (?) Video codecs

try this page for dnxhd
https://developer.blender.org/T33499

Thanks fellows for all the help and info - got the dnxhd export working from Blender now.
As I understand it “1080i 50” means interlaced (i) and 50 fps, correct? So I have to do interlaced & set the fps to 50. Blender only seems to do 1080p (not i) so I guess I should use Davinci Resolve to get the interlaced. But what is the best way to get fps 50 (now have 29,97)?

it’s not that it’s 50fps encoded, it’s still 25fps, but it’s playing back at 50fps. The interlacing allows for ‘duplicate frames’ that are interlaced. I would recommend ffmpeg if you are using linux. if the file is 29.97, you’ll need to inverse telecine it to 23.976 then convert it to 25. You can’t do a direct convert to 25. You’ll have field order issues, and could possible burn in the (3:2 pulldown) cadence you have on the video. I would first inverse telecine to the video to 23.976 progressive. Then crop the video to be 1920x1080 from your 1920x1280 file. Then you should have a file that is 23.976 fps progressive at 1920x1080. Then you can convert it to the 1080i 50 (25fps interlaced).

You also wrote something contradictory, did they want an mxf file or quicktime? both those are wrappers. More than likely they want mxf for those specs. It’s easy, it’s basically just a different file extension. good luck!

I ended up redoing the project in the correct resolution and with 25 fps. So now I can render a dnxhd 1080p 25fpfs from Blender, but how can I turn that into 1080i 50? Seems like Davinci Resolve can not do that, correct?
Thanks

Ah, you had to setup the project from to 50 fps from beginning in Davinci. Think I got it all working now. Lets see if they accept it.

I’ve had good luck with AppGeeker converter http://www.appgeeker.com/, you may give it a shot.

use ffmpeg for that. I hate to say it, but your best best is it make it in 1080p 23.976 (23.98) and then transcode it to 1080i 50.

Even if I have the Blender-project set up as 25 fps?

yeah you could, I meant having 23.976p as a base to work from is the best thing to do to reduce problems, but if it’s already built at 25. You should be fine, just transcode it now to the spec you need.

Thanks everyone for helping out with this! Thought I would wait until I could post a link to the short-film, but it hasnt appeared yet. But they bought it and I am pretty satsified with the result so all good.
(it was just the VSE I used in Blender to assemble footage, alot of photos and music. Nice to work with but hope it keeps involving. Wouldnt mind audio scrubbing inside metaclips and being able to add several effects track to the same clip)
Cheers

Hello,

Does someone succeeded in exporting .mov files in DNxHD format in blender ? What are the settings for it to succeed ?

Like said here https://developer.blender.org/T33499 , I’ve set bitrate to 220000 (in 2.8), but still blender output an error message :
Frame size 1440x1080i ,bitrate 110Mbs, pixel format yuv422p, framerate 0,0

It’s behaving the same in 2.79, when trying to match these settings it’s still not working…

I’ve got a lots of video to export from blender (26 * 5mn) in 1920x1080p 25fps, I can export to PNG or another format and convert it in another application, but that would take much more time and disk space.

I’ve also tried HuffYUV export, but I haven’t succeeded to play it in vlc, so I guess it will fail to import this in like premiere to output a Prores or DNXHD video .

H264 “lossless” works, but I would prefer a more standard (TV) output …

So does someone has a solution ? @3pointEdit maybe ?

Thanks !

Why are you wrapping them in .mov? Are you on a Mac? Apple has deprecated the old Quicktime, so its possible that pro-apps don’t support Blender’s ffmpeg variant. But I do recall that DNxHD was troublesome.