Poor quality .mov playback in quicktime

Question

Level 1

8 points

Poor quality .mov playback in quicktime

Hello. I'm new to Mac and recently got Final Cut Studio 2 for my MacBook Pro. I've been doing some basic experimenting with the program, and I've noticed that once I export a project to .mov from video that I capture from my Canon GL2, and try to play it back in quicktime, the video looks really bad (very low resolution and noisy). Is this normal? Could it be a codec issue? I have the video project and capture settings in Final Cut Pro set to DV NTSC. When I used the GL2 with Premiere on my windows machine, and exported to .avi, the playback in Windows Media Player looked great. I've also noticed that while capturing the video into Final Cut Pro, the video looks lower resolution than it did when I'd capture video on my windows machine.

Cheers,
Jacob

Intel MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Posted on Jul 25, 2007 5:36 AM

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Answer 1

Jul 25, 2007 5:43 AM in response to JacobMendel

It's actually a flaw with Quicktime Player's default settings.

To get your high-quality playback:

1. Open the .mov file in Quicktime Player.
2. Press Command-J or Click "Window" then "Show Movie Properties"
3. A window will display, Click the "Presentation" tab.
4. Look for the setting called "Conform aperture to:" and click the drop-down menu. By default "Clean" is selected. Choose "Encoded Pixels" and close the window.
5. Save the .mov file.

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Answer 2

hanumang

Level 6

9,250 points

Jul 25, 2007 5:58 AM in response to JacobMendel

Make sure that the High-Quality flag is set in QuickTime. By default it is not turned on so your movies are only being played at ½ the vertical resolution.

Best way to turn it on is to open QuickTime's preferences ( Command-,) and toggle it on there (othewise, you'd need to toggle it on for every QT clip - and who wants to do that). You'll need to restart QT after you've done this, but it should at least solve the low resolution issue for all DV clips in the future.

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Answer 3

hanumang

Level 6

9,250 points

Jul 25, 2007 6:08 AM in response to Michael Trauffer

Look for the setting called "Conform aperture to:" and click the drop-down menu. By default "Clean" is selected. Choose "Encoded Pixels" and close the window.

Interesting, my experience has been the opposite.

While Encoded Pixels gives you a 1:1 mapping of pixels, it fails to adjust the pixel aspect ratio for DV (or any other codec with non-square pixels) when played back in QuickTime.

I've had good experience with the Clean setting myself, but if that's no good, setting it to Production compensates for the pixel aspect ratio and does not crop out the blanking/overscan areas (leaving the 1:1 pixel mapping).

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Answer 4

Da Nam

Level 4

1,115 points

Jul 25, 2007 6:22 AM in response to JacobMendel

What are your export settings?

Are you going "file'>'export'>'quicktime movie'- current settings. (Not quicktime conversion)

Whilst capturing, the image in the log and capture window is low res which is why it's advised to monitor externally, at least with a consumer portable tv, better still a broadcast monitor.

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Answer 5

JacobMendel Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 25, 2007 6:47 AM in response to Da Nam

Yes. I'm not using quicktime conversion and am using the following settings:

Capture/Sequence
DV NTSC 48 kHz Anamorphic Preset
720x280 3:2 Aspect Ratio with Anamorphic 16:9 enabled
Compressor: DV/DVCPRO - NTSC
Quality: 100

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Answer 6

Jul 25, 2007 6:10 AM in response to hanumang

I've just discovered these settings a few days ago. Thanks for the tip, I'll give it a try.

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