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projection quality — direct DVI vs DVD
Hi all —
I’ve been stumped about this all weekend. I have been working on a project in FCP 5.0.4 with video I shot and photoshop layers brought in over top of the video. The video is footage of a constantly panning camera and the layers on top are animated using keyframe movement. Naturally, with all this movement when encoding mpeg-2 for DVD quality and bit-rate has been a concern especially since I will be projecting the final video 10-ft wide from a projector so any imperfection is magnified. I have encoded a DVD using the highest 2-pass VBR with best motion estimation using Quicktime conversion.
The overall projection quality is not the best especially the edges of shapes from the photoshop layers and even the FCP generated text. To ensure quality, one idea I had was to export an uncompressed self-contained quicktime movie and run it DVI to the projector from my laptop. To my surprise, the video looked worse than the DVD. I had heard many people do the uncompressed playback to projector with great results. My macbook recognized the projector but the quality looked like as if I blew up my monitor image causing distortion, etc. Strangely the image of my desktop on the projected image was perfect — it was the video that looked bad when played.
I was wondering if anybody has any suggestions to optimize the projection quality of this video:
-Is the DVI to projector route a viable solution to pursue?
-Am I missing any preference settings to do going DVI? i.e., should I close my laptop when it is running?
-If I go DVD to projector route should I use compressor to get better mpeg2 transcode than Quicktime?
-Would Adobe After Effects be able to render the Photoshop layers better?Any suggestions or advice would help. Much appreciated. Here are the specs that I’m working with:
Macbook Pro C2D
FCP 5.0.4
720 X 480
DV/DVC PRO NTSC
Projector: Eiki LC-x986 -
3 Replies
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[harry cheng] “To ensure quality, one idea I had was to export an uncompressed self-contained quicktime movie and run it DVI to the projector from my laptop. To my surprise, the video looked worse than the DVD.”
Harry,
Its the DV compression that’s hammering your material, especially the text and graphics. Exporting a uncompressed QT from that does nothing more than create an extremely large file from the underlying file compressed using the DV codec.
The solution is very simple, when you’re finished editing any DV project, hit Command+0 (thats zero) to open the Sequence Settings, and under the Quicktime Video Settings you will see the Compressor dropdown menu. Change the setting from DV to 8-bit uncompressed. Now re-render your entire timeline.
Now, your text and graphics will be uncompressed and pristine, and any export from that timeline will be uncompressed 8-bit. Both DVDs and exported video files will be many times better than what you had before.
Hope this helps…
David
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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Thank you very much — this is super helpful. Looking forward to trying it. Much appreciated
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David,
Am i correct in think that after you change the sequence settings, you need to add the Shift Field filter that comes with FCP, otherwise the fields are in the wrong order. FCP adds te filter automatically when you add a DV clip to an 8bit timeline, but not if you just change the settings. If you dont you will notice juddering effects on moving images.
best
NIck
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