[Steve Thomas]

Gentlemen,

Thanks so much for taking the time to chime in. As a newBee, it is very cool to get some direction from the O.G’s.

For clarification, I’m doing everything in the computer and monitoring on my screen (not using an external monitor). Given that my intended output is 100% computer vids (QT, flash, streams), I’m hoping I don’t need to add a monitor ?

Did some experimentation on your notes.

1. On the Garbage in/Garbage out theory, I’m trying to wrap my brain around what garbage gets ADDED in various workflows. I can live with the lo quality nature of some of my input media (in some cases, it is the “home video clips/MTV burst clip” feel I’m going for). Where I get concerned is when the high quality material I add (stills, graphics) seem to get dithered down to the weakest media format in the timeline. As I’m primarily a music producer, the best analogy i can think of would be the use of a lo-fi, junky, vintage vinyl sample. When I start with one of these and then add hi quality instruments and audio around the sample, it lifts the over all fidelity up and the results are big, bright, and professional sounding (hopefully : >).

2. Xport using Ed’s custom compressor settings cured the “zipper/screendoor” problem on my miniDV captures! The quality on the DV material seemed very close to the original minus the motion artifacts. Building on my comments in point 1, it still didn’t export my still graphics very well. I made a quick comparison graphic that shows a screengrab of the original picture juxtaposed a screengrab from the QT movie exported using the custom compressor setting.

D/L here: https://homepage.mac.com/reelsteve/filechute/example.zip

As I am just getting started creating video, I’m probably going to be sticking with miniDV, camera clips, and stuff I can mangle/create within the different apps (Photoshop, AE, FCP) until I graduate to the next level where I will start thinking about getting higher quality footage.

That said, it would be great to have a workflow that cured my quality loss issue described above and give me the best quality mid to high level QT movies for playback on computers.
Not concerned with TV or DVD at the moment.

advice?

thanks!
steve