Creating Watch Folders
A watch folder is used to automatically convert files you place into it using preset target profiles.
ProCoder 3 acts as a Windows service and “watches” each defined folder for new files. When a new file arrives, it is converted automatically according to the pre-defined assigned target profile settings. This is especially helpful when your output file format always remain the same.
- Permanent Watch Folder– Any file placed into a permanent watch folderis converted using the associated target profile and is active regardless of whether ProCoder 3 is open. The folder will remain watched until it is removed which is done by using the Watch Folder Manager tool.
To create a permanent watch folder:
1.If the ProCoder 3 Application is open, click the Watch button to open the Watch Folder Manager tool. Otherwise, run Watch Folder Setup from the Start menu in Programs > ProCoder 3. The ProCoder 3 Watch Folder Manager tool appears. Existing watch folders appear in the Active Watch Folders area.
2. Under New Watch Folder, click the … button next to the Watch Folder line.
3. Select the folder to watch for new files. To create a new folder, click the New Folder button.
4. To convert files placed into subfolders of the selected folder, click the checkbox to enable the Include Sub Folder option.
5.Watch Folders use target settings from a preset. Choose a preset from the drop-down menu.
Any custom presets you have saved from the ProCoder 3 application appear in this list in addition to the basic presets.
6. Then click the … button next to Target Folder to select the output folder. All files that arrive in the Watch Folder will be converted and the output is written to the Target Folder.
7. To output files in subfolders of the Watch Folder into matching subfolders in the Target Folder, enable the Append Source Sub Folder to Target option. If it is not enabled, files in subfolders of the Watch Folder will be output to root of the Target Folder.
8. Click the drop-down list next to Target File to choose what to do when conversion creates a file with the same name as an existing file in the Target Folder.
- If you select “Rename if exists” the program will rename the output file, appending a number starting from 00 to the name to make it unique.
- If you select “Overwrite if exists” the program will overwrite any existing output file in the Target Folder with the converted file.
9. Click the Start Watch button to add the watch folder to the Active Watch Folders list.
- Attached Retrieval Watch – Sometimes the file that you are interested in transcoding is not on a file system that is directly accessible from the file system on the machine where the transcoder is running. In these cases, ProCoder 3 gives you the capability to access remote machines via either FTP or File Sharing. The Attached Retrieval Watch option may be selected for any watch folder. Files that arrive in the remote location will be transferred to the specific watch folder for transcoding. The Attached Retrieval Watch dialog gives control over the following items:
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- FTP or File Sharing Location
- User name and password
- Timing (how often to look at the remote location for new content)
- File wildcards (what type of files to look for)
- What to do with the files once transferred
Application Options
Transcoding Settings
The Transcoding Settings window allows you to set target folders to save encoded files and specify processing options for the application. Setting these parameters is useful if you are going to be dealing with many source files from a single or similar sources.
To open the Transcoding Settings dialog, choose Options > Transcoding Settings.
Processing Options Tab
The Processing Options tab controls both Frame Rate Conversion and Scaling and Letterboxing preferences.
Frame Rate Conversion:
If your source and your target have different frame rates, there are many different ways to convert the source frame rate to the target frame rate.
- Always Pick Nearest Frame – This option creates a target frame by picking the nearest temporal frame from the source stream. This preserves full spatial source image quality. However, depending on the ratio between the source and target frame rates, movement in the video may appear jerky.
- Always Interpolate – This option creates a target frame interpolating between the two nearest temporal source frames. This guarantees smooth movement. However, since every target frame is an interpolation between source frame, the spatial quality is degraded and “ghost” images may appear.
- Automatic Selection –When the source or target frame rate is below approximately 23 fps, ProCoder 3 will pick the nearest frame instead of interpolating in order to avoid ghosting. If ProCoder 3 needs to interpolate frames for doing frame rate conversions, ghost images might appear. Use the Automatic selection option to avoid ghosting. If ghosting still occurs, then use the Always pick nearest frame option.
Source Playback Speed Adjustment– ProCoder 3 normally does not alter the playback rate of sources in order to preserve the source’s original speed and visual intent. In other words, objects always move at the same speed through video regardless of the target frame rate and a 10-second source always converts to a 10-second target.
However, in some circumstances it is advantageous to slightly alter the source playback rate by a very small amount in order to aid conversion. For example, a 29.97fps source can be sped up to 30fps playback fo
r conversion to a 15 fps output, removing the possibility of interpolation artifacts and making the conversion faster.
It is also standard that 24fps film transfers to PAL DVD-Video are not put through frame rate conversions. Instead, the 24fps film content is encoded and authored as if it was 25fps content, resulting in a 4% speed-up. This eliminates any interpolation or pulldown but makes PAL DVDs of film transfers slightly shorter in length.
Enable Source Playback Speed Adjustment – Check this box to allow ProCoder 3 to alter the playback speed of sources up to the percentage in the Max. Adjustment (%) box.
Chapter points are metadata information that can be embedded in the source or output file. These chapter points are generally used to allow jumping to different sections within a video.
Set Chapter Point at Source Stitch Points – This option can be used when stitching together multiple files into single output file. Chapter points will be set at each joining point. An example use of this would be merging the multiple chapters of a movie into a single output file.
Time Code is used to represent the temporal location of a particular frame of video. The time code may be embedded in the source video or it may be imputed from the video itself. Time code may be discontinuous in a particular piece of video.
Use NTSC Drop Frame Time Code –
In the NTSC video world time code can be represented in two modes, drop frame and non-drop frame. Drop frame time code compensates for the difference between wall clock time and the time code generated by the 29.97 frame rate of NTSC video. Choose this option to make all time code display in drop frame mode.
Scaling and Letterboxing:
If your source and your target have different frame sizes, there are two different ways to handle this scenario. For example, you may have a 16:9 source file that needs to be encoded to a target file with a 4:3 aspect ratio frame size. Because of the different frame sizes, you either have to scale and crop your Source file, or add black bars to the video to compensate for the difference.
Add Letterbox/Scale & Crop slider– Use the slider to adjust the desired percentages or cropping. Select 100% letterbox, by sliding the adjustment bar to all the way to the left will leave the source frame completely visible, with letterbox bars added if necessary. If the slider is at 0% letterbox (100% Scale and Crop) , the image will fill the entire space without letterboxing, but the sides will be chopped off. Leaving the letterbox slider in the middle (50%) is a mixture of adding letterbox bars and scaling the file to fit the space. If you know you can afford to cut off a little of the video, then you should have the bar more toward the middle. Experiment with these settings to determine the correct settings for your source files.
Allow anamorphic scaling –This setting allows scaling the pixel aspect ratio non-proportionally (horizontal and vertical scaling are different). Next to this checkbox is a field for entering the maximum aspect ratio distortion percentage allowed during the anamorphic scaling process.
Enable MPEG-1 compliant scaling– ProCoder 3 normally converts full-D1 sources to MPEG-1 SIF using the Scaling and Letterboxing slider setting. However, the MPEG specification states that to convert a full-D1 (720×480) source to MPEG-1 SIF (352×240), crop 8 pixels from the left and right sides of the source to create a 704×480 frame then scale it to 50% for a 352×240 frame. Checking this box forces ProCoder 3 to use the MPEG-1 specification method.
Crop when scaling D1 to DV (NTSC)– Enable this option when converting a NTSC D1 (720×486) source to NTSC DV (720×480). ProCoder 3 will crop 4 lines from the top and 2 lines from the bottom of the source frame during conversion. This results in faster processing and higher quality since scaling is not performed.
Crop/ Adjust when converting between VBI containing formats (480/512, 576/608 Lines) –This option can be used for certain transcodes between broadcast formats where either the source or target contain Vertical Blanking Interval (VBI) information and the other format does not. With this option checked, ProCoder 3 will either strip out the extra 32 lines of VBI data when going from a VBI source to a non-VBI target or add 32 lines of blank VBI data when going from a non-VBI source to a VBI target.
Discard field when scaling height by ½ – When using full-size interlaced source files, this option discards one of the fields if you are scaling the file to half-size. In some cases, this eliminates the need for applying deinterlacing filters to your source file since discarding a field effectively deinterlaces the video.