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out putting dilemma
I am using final cut express 2 and have an apple 23″ cinema display monitor which everything looks beautiful on.
I’ve tried out putting via fire wire into a pioneer dvd recorder with dissapointing end results. I’ve even used a TV connected to the recorder to monitor color and contrast changes I’ve had to make in FCE to compensate for the difference in appearance between my apple display and ntsc. I’ve gotten close but It’s frustrating.
A friend told me that the fire wire compresses the signal, and that I’m better off keeping it with in the computer domain. I have toast 6 titanium for burning dvds and I’ve used quicktime versions of my project with toast at it’s highest setting but the end result is a degraded picture and sound quality. Is there some kind of quicktime compression setting in FCE or something with in Toast that I’m unaware of to get a satisfactory end result?
I don’t want to spend the extra money for a professional monitor and card if there’s something with in the methods I’ve described which will work if used properly. -
4 Replies
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If you were reasonably happy with the work as you viewed it on the NTSC monitor through firewire, and then unhappy when it was recorded
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Thanks Tom for your reply. Here are some specific details:…..
The pioneer recorder is the DVR 510-H (about $600) , which when recorded on at it’s highest setting(fine),
plays back at the same quality that was monetered. The problem I think is with the monitor which is an older model Zenith 20″ tv that only has an analogue RCA input that is connected to the Pioneer RCA out.
Once I take the same DVD and play it on my Mitsubishi diamond widescreen ,what looked great on the Zenith now looks washed out….. so I”ve been “guess tweeking” it on the Zenith to make it look better on the Mitsubishi which sort of works but is a pain in the ass. Probably even a newer tv with at least an S-video input would be an improvement. ….. As for Toast , the options are only:encoding at a standard or high setting( I choose the high setting) and the recording speed, which automatically goes to” best ” setting,
which i’ve used, or I”ve also chosen the 4x setting which is the speed of the dvds, and both turn out inferior.
I wonder of there is some kind of compression setting in FCE that needs to be made. I usually choose “export as quicktime movie”to make the file I then put into toast because that’s supposedly an uncompressed export option. There’s also “export using quicktime conversion which offers options including compression variables. The drive in my G4 dual 800 is a pioneerDVR108. I”m not quite sure what else I need to explain, or what else I should consider. -
Monitoring is relative
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ToTom and or anyone else following this dialogue …….. thanks agin for your reflection.I’ve mainly been testing my video on different peoples TVs in semi dark to darkened rooms and the standard by which I get it to look good on the Mitsubishi seems to translate pretty well on other sets. I’d just like to simplify the method of how I get there….. either by getting a pro NTSC monitor, or if I can get away with it, a newer tv with
S and maybe component (3color) video input that would come close to what I get on my larger set.
The other option and more immediate way would be to burn a DVD in my MAC which I did with a 4 minute music video that held up pretty well as far as color and contrast, but had some artifacting going on which might be related to a compression issue with in FCEs exporting to quicktime. I noticed that with a 45 minute dvd I recently burned, when checking the file info about it’s size said that it had a capacity of 1.37 GB of which 1.37 GB was used with zero kb available which seems kind of strange considering that DVDs usually hold up to 4.7 GB……. . . .That it maxed out at 1.37 might explain it’s “lesser “quality but why would it max out below it’s usual amount?
If anyone can or cares to respond to all of this ,it would be appreciated … Thanks
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