Why is my screen output blurry?
I am attempting to create instructional video demos that I can stream from a Web site. The actual application I'm recording is a 1024x768 Windows app, which I'm using Adobe Captivate 4 to capture and then output to an AVI file. I'm currently using the Cinepak Radius codec for that (mostly because it was included with Captivate). I get a pretty nice looking AVI file, which I intend to place a front and back live recorded pair of bumpers and a voiceover throughout.
But I'm having problems once I load the AVI into Final Cut Express 4. I've been trying to experiment with the output to get good clarity of the screen text, but no matter what settings I seem to put in, I get blurry screen text. The best way I'd describe it is if you look at a newspaper which has been registered incorrectly and the different colors aren't lining up exactly - it's just off enough to make you scream.
Interestingly enough, and frustratingly enough, if I have focus on the Viewer and go to export using QuickTime Conversion, the clip will come out crystal clear. If the timeline or the Canvas has focus, it will be... well, out of focus. So basically I can hack away at the original AVI and turn it into smaller clear MOV files, but not have any additional video/voiceover/etc.
I've also tried exporting from Captivate as an uncompressed file (2.5 mins = 10GB), but with the same result. I was hoping that it might be the original codec getting encoded again that was degrading the output, but apparently not.
I feel like I'm just missing something here... anyone have any suggestions?
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.6), FCE 4