Low Res Video on Export?!

[Dave Johnson]

In order to help you, we will need more info … as much info as possible, but especially the codecs and formats … of your source material (tape format), what you digitized your source material as, of your editing sequence, and of the file you are exporting. Often vague quality issues like “Low Res Video” come from mistakes at one of those stages and/or inconsistencies between them that make them not play nicely together and yield poor results.

[John Fishback]

And how are you viewing the results – on your computer, through a broadcast monitor, etc.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 QT7.5.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870
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[Christopher Griffin]

I shot on DVCAM, digitized as a quicktime movie, which is fine, quality is good.

It does not matter which codec I use. AVI, MPEG2/4, Uncompressed. I have tried everything, and no matter what I do, it looks crappy, or crappier.

I am positive it is not an error in the export settings, is there something else that could be amiss?

I am viewing it on a finalized DVD. The chapter menu looks great, but the video, not so much.

If anyone has any tips, feel free to email me directly…

[John Fishback]

What program did you use to encode the mv2s for the DVD and what were the settings?

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 QT7.5.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870
ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE Enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
24″ TV-Logic Monitor
Final Cut Studio 2 (up to date)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[Christopher Griffin]

I used DSP, set to 10-15 mbps

[Dave Johnson]

[christopher Griffin] “Whenever I export my sequence, the video is low res”

Being that you originally stated that the quality loss occurs with the file you export from FCP (vs. with a good quality export that is encoded for DVD, then looks poor), it doesn’t seem that your issue has anything to do with your DVD.

Personally, in order to find the solution, I would first isolate the problem … If it looks fine inside of FCP (i.e., when viewing the FCP sequence on a broadcast monitor), but looks bad when exported, then maybe it does have to do with the export settings or something similar. However, it sounds like that is not the case, which means it probably doesn’t look right inside FCP either, which would lead me to believe the issue is with the sequence settings.

If that is the case you could probably find the issue either by just thoroughly checking your sequence settings or doing this:
Right click the FCP bin window for the list of things you can have it show about each file and sequence (video codec, frame rate, aspect ratio, etc.). Check all the pertinent ones then go down the list and compare the source file specs to the FCP sequence specs.

[Christopher Griffin]

Thats what I thought it was. I just double checked, and everything looks about right.

Here are the specs:

720×480 dv/dvcpro compressor, ntsc ccir 601 pixel aspect, lower (even) field dominance.

Everything was running normal for me up until a few weeks ago when I updated my FCP to 6.0.5. I am in the process of reinstalling FCP.

[John Fishback]

A couple of things. When you exported from FCP you should Export Quicktime Use Current Settings and not check Recompress All Frames.

I’m assuming that DSP is DVD Studio Pro. While DVDSP allows you to encode you shouldn’t use it that way. Use Compressor. Also your data rate is way to high for a DVD. The maximum allowable rate is around 10mbps. In practice most people set the upper limit to 8mbps or less. That allows space for the audio. If you use ac3 (and you should) you might be able to push a but higher, but you don’t need to for excellent imagery.

In Compressor choose the DVD: Best Quality 90 minutes preset and you’ll get very good images the way it is. Also in Compressor is an ac3 preset, but you’ll have to change some settings for it to work properly. Highlight the ac3 preset and in the Inspector click the Encoder tab and then the Audio tab. Make sure the data rate is 192kbps and change -27 to -31 in the Dialog Normalization field. Then click the Preprocessing tab and change the Compression Prest to None.

Once your files are encoded import them to DVDSP and you should be good. You can find more info about this in the Apple DVD Studio pro forum on the COW.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 QT7.5.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870
ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE Enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
24″ TV-Logic Monitor
Final Cut Studio 2 (up to date)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

[Christopher Griffin]

I am still getting the same problem. I exported with your exact settings, from FCP into Compressor, and the video still looks the same. Choppy, pixelated.

[John Fishback]

Try exporting a reference movie from FCP. Then bring that into Compressor. Sending to Compressor from FCP has been known to cause problems.

John

MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.5 QT7.5.5 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870
ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE Enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
24″ TV-Logic Monitor
Final Cut Studio 2 (up to date)

Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN