[Smitty Miler]

H.264 is the Quicktime movie compression…. right? What would be the best setting to use if you wanted to play a video back on a Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro for presenting on a 720p projector?

—- UPDATE —-

Ok, not sure what is going on. I switched my MacBook from mirroring to dual display. Only the resolutions with (interlaced) next to them would output a signal. The highest resolution available was 1440 x 900i which with the video off, the desktop windows/menus didn’t look great — readable but not crisp.

SO, I took the HDV video I imported to iMovie and exported it BACK to the camera. That takes the MacBook out of the equation. I played the “edited video” back through the camera to the projector and it looked MUCH better than the MacBook output… can’t say if how different it looked from the original source. So I guess that would be HDV > AIC > back to HDV?

That said, perhaps HDV to AIC isn’t loosing that much?

I’m wondering how an AppleTV (540/30fps @ 5Mbps max ) or Mac Mini (probably limited to 720/30fps) would look.

[Smitty Miler]

I never thought about this, but could this be a fault of my MacBook Pro or how I’m trying to do this?

I’ve been using the DVI-out to feed my projector. All the calibration on the projector is the same on DVI and component currently. The native display on a MBP is 1440×900. It has a ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics processor w/ 128MB of v-RAM. It is capable of dual display and video mirroring and supports up to 2560 x 1600.

My projector is 720p native. Plugging the DVI into the MBP turns on video mirroring. I’m only looking at the projector screen and no the MBP display.

[Smitty Miler]

I figured this was the best place for this, FCP is far more of a professional app so there should be many more videophiles here. I posted a similar question on another site and no one understood the issue. I’d bet most people using iMovie HD are blown away with AIC and don’t even mind AppleTV’s 540p setting. Being in the graphics field and working with video I guess I’ve trained myself to see faults (some times I wish I could look past them!). Every time I walk into a BB or CC I want to recalibrate all their displays ; ) Unfortunately, I work mostly with still images so I don’t have FCP and only a Core 2 Duo. I may need it up my software/hardware now.

[Smitty Miler]

Aside from my bad workflow… HDV native vs AIC .MOV video quality?

[Smitty Miler]

Basically I’m just using iMovie and considering FPC now that I’m working in HD. iMovie only gives you AIC as a choice… actually it doesn’t give you a choice, that’s what it does — imports HDV as AIC and gives you a .MOV clip.

H.264 was used on the export only just so I could see how it looked. After being disappointed, I went back to the original .MOV and it still lacks the detail of the HDV source.

[Smitty Miler]

Thanks for the response. So exporting as ProRes should look better than H.264? I’m puzzled by the fact that the AIC file untouched and played through Quicktime is not nearly as impressive as the actual HDV from the camera. Thoughts there?

[Smitty Miler]

Sorry I didn’t see there was a Sony forum, HOWEVER I’m considering a HV30 or HF10.

I uploaded a couple sample clips (they’re pretty large). On the in-car shot you can see the lighthouse snaps left to right. The crab clip is really really bad at first. You see some funkiness at 21s and 32s. Once I stop moving the camera it looks good. These aren’t the best shots, but pretty good examples of what I’m talking about

https://rapidshare.com/files/13693012…Movie.mov.html
https://rapidshare.com/files/13693657…vie_2.mov.html

So is this OIS correction and is this normal? Does Canon act the same way?