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harrisjamieh · Jul 5, 2005, 11:08 AM

Hi I am a brand new final cut pro 5 user, and am having to learn the program step by step.

Now i have managed to capture to the mac (although this proved to be difficult), using the log & capture options. This was fine, until i was browsing my external Lacie 1TB hard disk (as you do), and i found the quicktime files for what i had captured using final cut. When i watched these files on my shiny new 20" cinema display, the quality of the captured (DV) video was awful! It was pixillated and jerkey, and after much studying of the manual and 'fiddling' with FCP i have not found a way to improve capture quality.

Has anyone else had the same problem / have a solution as this is rather urgent as i need to get a film out ASAP

Help would be greatly appreciated!

Thinine · Jul 5, 2005, 03:24 PM

What Mac do you have? Playback quality is dynamic in FCP5, so if you don't have the hardware, the playback quality may be low. Play the files in QT Player to see what they really look like. Be sure to turn on the high quality option in the QTP options.

harrisjamieh · Jul 5, 2005, 04:28 PM

Originally Posted by Thinine

What Mac do you have? Playback quality is dynamic in FCP5, so if you don't have the hardware, the playback quality may be low. Play the files in QT Player to see what they really look like. Be sure to turn on the high quality option in the QTP options.

Sorry, forgot to include mac details : powermac G5 1.8 ghz single core, 2 gig ram, standard 64 meg Nividia graphics, so hardware should be ok to play high quality video. ive looked at the video in quicktime player and the quality isnt good, no where near as good as when i used to use pinnacle studio on my windoze pc, which gave top quality apture from the same canon DV camcorder

mAxximo · Jul 5, 2005, 07:02 PM

You have to check your settings under “Capture Settings” and make sure everything is OK there. FCP defaults are crap.

betasp · Jul 5, 2005, 07:53 PM

If you are capturing DV, of course it will look like crap. It is compressed 5:1. Its native resolution is 720x480 and 72dpi. If you are looking at it on a cinema display is will look horrible. When I used to do production, I refused to let a client look at DV footage in a high-def. display because it looked so bad. Try outputing and you will see the old addage at work "garbage in, garbage out." What you get it will be the same as what you put in.

sodamnregistered2 · Jul 5, 2005, 08:20 PM

Also, video on a computer screen, especially an LCD is just wrong.

If you took your capture, and burned a quick test DVD and played it on a TV... I bet the video looks pretty good. You would not notice as much pixelation and the color would look correct and saturated.

You don't need much power to play DV back on the computer. I used to use final cut pro on my Pismo 500 laptop, so a new iMac should have no problems.

zerostar · Jul 5, 2005, 09:45 PM

Also be sure you quicktime setting are set to high quality when playing inside the quicktime player.

"Quicktime Prefrences>Use high quality playback when available" Should be checked.

If you hook your DV Cam to your TV that is the SAME EXACT quality you should get when you import in to final cut. If you import your footage in Final Cut then dump it back to a blank tape you will be at 100% the quality you started at since it is a digital stream.

Also, DV can be good quality depending on the camera, I help produce a show for FOX that we shoot on a Sony PD-170 and it looks great for what we spend on production.

harrisjamieh · Jul 6, 2005, 02:16 PM

Originally Posted by zerostar

Also be sure you quicktime setting are set to high quality when playing inside the quicktime player.

"Quicktime Prefrences>Use high quality playback when available" Should be checked.

If you hook your DV Cam to your TV that is the SAME EXACT quality you should get when you import in to final cut. If you import your footage in Final Cut then dump it back to a blank tape you will be at 100% the quality you started at since it is a digital stream.

Also, DV can be good quality depending on the camera, I help produce a show for FOX that we shoot on a Sony PD-170 and it looks great for what we spend on production.

Thanks for the help, turns out that this was the problem, quicktime wasnt set for 'high quality video' so when i was previewing the video in quicktime player the quality wasnt at its best. Sorry, im new at mac, i would have never thought that the media player would have a 'high quality' setting on it lol. anyway cheers everyone for the help, i can now continue making my movie