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Activity Forums Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy My HD isn’t looking very HD-like. Any reason why?

  • My HD isn’t looking very HD-like. Any reason why?

    Posted by Jordan Wilson on June 16, 2010 at 10:52 pm

    By the time I’m done exporting, I feel the video is a little jumpy/not as smooth as it looks in-camera.

    I’m shooting 720p/60 fps with a Canon 7D

    Using MPEG streamclip to transcode files into “Apple XDCAM EX 720p60 (35 MB/s VBR)” format. I turn the quality all the way up to 100% un-check Interlaced Scaling.

    Using Final Cut Pro 7 on an iMac intel Core 2 Duo 3.06 GHz machine with 4GB ram.

    Exporting to Quicktime in Final Cut as “XDcam EX 720p 60 VBR)

    AFTER ALL THIS — I feel there is a loss of quality. What can I change at this point to improve the video quality?

    And once I burn the .mov file with iDVD, I am SURE there is a loss of quality.
    What can I do on the DVD-burning end to make it better?

    Thanks for your input

    Jordan Wilson replied 15 years, 11 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Chris Borjis

    June 17, 2010 at 12:00 am

    why are you using XDCam as the codec and not something less
    compressed like ProRes?

    thats one bit

    as for the dvd, when you compress it with compressor make sure
    the resize filter is set to best quality.

    should be an improvement.

  • Andy Mees

    June 17, 2010 at 9:25 am

    I’m shooting 720p/60 fps with a Canon 7D

    Ok, so shooting H264

    Using MPEG streamclip to transcode files into “Apple XDCAM EX 720p60 (35 MB/s VBR)” format.

    Then transcoding to MPEG2

    Exporting to Quicktime in Final Cut as “XDcam EX 720p 60 VBR)

    And then re-compressing to MPEG2 again

    AFTER ALL THIS — I feel there is a loss of quality

    No kidding!

    And once I burn the .mov file with iDVD, I am SURE there is a loss of quality.

    Well of course there is. You’re now taking your nasty re-compressed HD edit and re-compressing it yet again, this time to a low bit rate SD MPEG2 file for DVD delivery.

    I agree with Chris on this. Your current workflow is your problem. Transcode your source clips to Apple ProRes 422 (unscaled), then work natively and export your master edit in that same format. Take that HD master **, reimport it into FCP and drop it into an SD ProRes sequence (Apple ProRes 422 NTSC 48kHz Anamorphic), export that using those settings and use that as your source for iDVD.

    You might want to test this workflow on a single short but representative clip of just few seconds, see if the results are more to your liking.

    Cheers
    Andy

    ** Note that your HD master is 60p whereas your SD target will be 60i, however in creating this 60i conversion FCP will actually throw away every other frame ie it will create a the 30psf representation of the edit so will not get the full smooth motion of your 60p original. If you want to maintain the original motion quality then you can use the free JES Deinterlacer app to create 60i from 60p

  • Jordan Wilson

    June 17, 2010 at 5:03 pm

    Thanks.
    I was using XDCam because Philip Bloom used it in one of his tutorials.

    I’ve never used compressor…. so I’ll have to look into that. Thanks.

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