CS4 and Quicktime

[Vince Becquiot]

What about Quicktime Animation?

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Tim Kolb]

Give us a little more info.

QuickTime version?

Matrox product?

Have you tried to export with non Matrox project settings?

If you need to get something done right this moment, I’d export the video as some sort of high quality AVI file and buy QuickTime Pro for 29.95 USD and convert that way.

I’ve done QT export from CS4…I’ve not tried every possible output, but I’ve had no issue so far…

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Mark Hollis]

The Animation codec and the Video codec describe two different color spaces. Animation is in RGB color space while Video is YCbCr (often called YUV).

If you don’t mind doing a two-step process, you can export an AVI and then use Mediacoder to export it to Quicktime .MOV. Mediacoder is free.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Chuck Bolland]

I’ve now taken Matrox out of the mix so it should not be an issue. As per a suggestion in another Creative Cow posting some weeks ago, I downloaded an older version of Quicktime, which the author claimed worked with CS4, whereas the latest version of QT did not. That version is: 7.4.5
I have tried other presets such as DV-NTSC and DVCPRO-50 with the same results. Adobe forums have been no help at all.
Thank you for working on this with me. If I don’t find a solution a client may be lost.

[Mark Hollis]

I was at an Adobe presentation some time ago and the Adobe people waxed long and hard about how much thay didn’t like Quicktime.

Quicktime, like MXF is a “wrapper” for material that may include codecs and other devices that will get you media. I have worked on another tool that cannot use the latest form of Quicktime because Apple’s changes seem to be all about supporting things like iPods and iPhones which don’t really matter to the production workflow.

As long as the version of Quicktime you have installed has the codecs you need, you should be good to go. But, to the extent I needed a particular Quicktime codec, I have tended to trust a two-step process more than a direct export to a Quicktime file.

I recommend the use of Quicktime Pro to transfer from one codec to another and from AVI to Quicktime. The best tool I have found for dealing with Quicktime is a Macintosh computer.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Chuck Bolland]

Indeed. I got the QT Pro and have converted and rendered some files. They look very bad, almost out of focus. This is just one more problem I’ve experienced with CS4 and its various programs. I’m having less than satisfactory results with the Adobe Media Encoder which seems to make a lot of my shots quite soft, like just a bit out of focus. I was assured by an Adobe engineer 3 months ago that the new edition of encoder, 4.1, would fix that. so far it hasn’t. About all I can do with my client now is send him .avi’s in the hopes because he works in the Mac environment, he must have the encoding thing down a bit better than I do. While I’m sure I’m overlooking something here, Quicktime or not, I’m getting tired of CS4 turning some well lit and focused video into something less than that.

[Mark Hollis]

Adobe wants everyone in the world to use Flash. And while I can appreciate the value of Flash, it does not have the capabilities of Quicktime or MXF.

Mac users can get Telestream’s Flip4Mac, which will seamlessly translate wmv files into something Quicktime can read. I have seen zero softness issues and with any decent Mac (G5 and above) anything you produce in a wmv will play back just fine on a Macintosh. And, if your client has the Flip4Mac Player Pro, which is $29 per seat, he or she can simply convert your wmv file to Quicktime (or you can do it with a Mac Mini and ship your client Quicktime files).

I was able to use Flip4Mac successfully with a G4 Macintosh running at 1GHz for any video up to standard compressed NTSC-PAL size. HD would not play back without dropping frames and completely uncompressed NTSC-PAL would drop frames. but if you played uncompressed NTSC-PAL from an array through Final Cut Pro, it did work just fine.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Tim Kolb]

[Chuck Bolland] “While I’m sure I’m overlooking something here, Quicktime or not, I’m getting tired of CS4 turning some well lit and focused video into something less than that.”

If QuickTime Pro is doing an independent conversion and having a problem when the original file looks fine….how is that CS4’s problem?

What are the video settings before and after transcode?

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

[Bram Tulloch]

Indeed. I got the QT Pro and have converted and rendered some files. They look very bad, almost out of focus.

If I’m understanding this thread correctly, you’re now exporting from quicktime pro to a dvcpro codec?

If it looks like crap when you do this, you can fix this very easily.
The quicktime file itself is fine.

Try this:
Open the “very bad” quicktimes.
Click Window>> Show Movie Properties
Click on the Video track to highlight it
click on the “Visual Settings” tab
Check the “High Quality” box in the right hand bottom corner.

It should look instantly better.
Now just “save” that and you’re good to go.

This happens to us all the time when we are asked to provide DV PAL quicktimes.

Hope this helps and I’m understanding your problem correctly