Rendering/Exporting to Quicktime with DV Codec

[Tim Vaughan]

Alot of times, it has to do with the internal programs viewer window size. For instance, if you are watching your rendered movie on a view window of 113%, it will look fuzzy. Also, if the file is not rendered within your program, you may also see an ugly picture. Also, make sure your settings match. (if you are dealing with a 720×480 file and add a 720×486 file, it may appear to be a little weird)

Hope this helps
Tim

[Joseph W. bourke]

I run into this all the time, depending where I’m doing the viewing. We use Quicktime Pro to output our final DV versions for our playback system (720 x 480). So my workflow out of AE is to first render to the Quicktime DV codec in After Effects (DV/DVCPRO, spatial quality high=100, 48khz audio 16 bit stereo). THEN I open the file up in Quicktime pro and export a DV file (Movie to DV stream, NTSC, 4:3, audio format locked at 48khz). The file looks absolutely horrible just about everywhere except in After Effects, but it airs looking just fine. We have also put this format to tape with good luck.

My opinion on DV (at least DV25, which is what we air in) is that it is just barely broadcast quality. If it’s first generation, which it is, since I send my files directly to our playback server, it holds up. Once you do anything else with it, that transcodes it, losing a generation, you start to get noise, field hash, etc.. As I said, this works for our particular workflow, but you may want to give it a try.

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV

[Steve Roberts]

Are QT Player and FCP set to view high quality?

[Kevin Camp]

i rememeber coming across this issue several years ago… i think the issue was that quicktime dv contains a low-res/quality preview, but that can be overriden in qt pro (as steve mentioned). things looked bad in qt but were fine (well.. as fine a graphics look in dv25) once we played them out of the air device that needed dv.

joseph, i don’t know about rendering to quicktime dv, then exporting that to dv stream. it seems that you may be compressing dv twice… you can export a dv stream straight from ae from file>export>dv stream, and should get the same export options there as you do in quicktime pro. its the method we used to get dv into this deko we have. that way you would bypass any further potential loss and save a little time too.

[Joseph W. bourke]

For some reason, the guy that runs our graphics gateway (which is our on-air playback engine) at the corporate level requires that second pass with Quicktime Pro. I don’t get it either; my feeling is that every time you transcode (even with the same codec) you lose something. But of course DV25 looks bad to begin with. Thanks.

Joe Bourke

[Kevin Camp]

i can relate to dealing with corporate workflows… they like to have one procedure for every one, even if many of the units could do it faster, easier and, often, better with a differrent workflow.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Steve Roberts]

Yeah, moldyboot’s right, and your instincts are correct, too. You’re recompressing DV with the second pass.

But if they want garbage, we’ll give it to ’em. Happily. 🙂

[Joseph W. bourke]

Yeah! Isn’t it amazing how corporate rules so often lead to poorer quality, bad morale, ineffective management, and higher profit! Ya gotta love this country!

Joe Bourke

[Jim Medcraft]

It’s not just your country, I am preparing video content for a live awards show and the media serva they are using to control it only takes .DV files, which suck with about 45 short bits of video I cann’t render out a dv stream in the AE render queue.

[Joseph W. bourke]

Jim –

I believe if you set your AE export settings to Quicktime, then go into the Format Options button on the Video Output pane, you will see in the pulldown, both a PAL and an NTSC DV setting. This is the setting we use to get the .DV files to our playback server. They look horrible when played back on the desktop, but are adequate for the server (I think that’s the idea – smallest file size – just barely broadcast).

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV