• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  Losing Image Quality when inporting

  Posted by Gerard Odonnell on April 18, 2011 at 7:24 pm

  Hi Guys, I’m importing from a Canon XHA1 to Final cut Express. I import footage via firewire the quality of the footage is reduced by around 25% and shows a lot of noise. its not the size, its the quality and clarity of the image. I don’t think the camera is down converting but when I watch the playback being ingested from the camera on the computer screen its defo HD and perfect but when I watch it back on final cut the image degrades.

  My easy set up settings on FCE are

  Easy set up settimgs
  Format (all formats)
  Rate: All Rates
  Use (HDV-Apple Intermediate Codec 1080i50)

  I’ve just checked the settings on the camera the playback was set to auto and the downconverter was set to off.
  are there any other settings you might need to help me – Im a novice but have sound knowlege and have searched forums etc but can’t see the problem.

  Any help or suggestions are really appreciated

  Michael Gissing replied 15 years, 5 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Chris Tompkins

  April 18, 2011 at 9:30 pm

  Ah,…No.
  Firewire transfers digits from one to another. There is no image loss, no quality loss, no degradation occurs.
  It’s a straight digital transfer. Like dragging a word doc from one hard drive to another.

  Chris Tompkins
  Video Atlanta LLC
• 

  Michael Gissing

  April 19, 2011 at 12:59 am

  The problem is the HDV is being converted to Apple Intermediate Codec which is an old lossy legacy codec. If it were captured as HDV then it is a straight data transfer as Chris says, but FCE is re compressing to AIC.

  If FCE can capture and edit as HDV then you are OK, but I suspect it doesn’t. Just one of the gotchas with the crippled cheaper version.

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