Which compression setting to use when capturing

[Shane Ross]

Only if you shot a format other than DV. When you shoot DV, the compression happens in the camera onto tape. And there it stays. When you capture via firewire as DV/NTSC, that is a direct file transfer, zero quality loss. But you need to properly view your footage on an external monitor in order to see the full quality. Even then, DV is very lossy.

#2 Blurry Playback

Shane’s Stock Answer #2: Blurry playback

ONLY JUDGE THE QUALITY OF YOUR MATERIAL ON AN EXTERNAL BROADCAST MONITOR, OR AT LEAST A TV.

The Canvas shows you what happens after the codec you are working with has been applied. The Viewer shows you the material in its native format. Once you drop the footage from the Viewer into the timeline, it inherits the attributes of the sequence. If it is a DV sequence, the footage will render out as DV.

1. Disable overlays on the Canvas.

2. Make sure you’ve rendered everything (no green bars at the top of the timeline).

Video playback requires large amounts of data and many computations. In order to maintain frame rate and be viewable at a normal size, only about one-fourth of the DV data is used in displaying the movie to the screen. However, the DV footage is still at full quality, and is best viewed thru a TV or broadcast monitor routed thru your camera or deck.

Shane

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[Mariah Parker]

Thanks a lot Shane, much appreciated!

[Sacha Thomas]

Very informative Shane. 🙂 Thanks!