Compressor outputs low quality

Its my first time using compressor, and Im writing with my left hand so bear with me. I have a batch of files I want to convert from ProRes to PNG for realtime playback in different tempoes with alpha channel. When I add the files, choose right resolution and codec it doesnt playback as smooth as if I add the files one at a time into motion and convert them there. Its probably something I overlooked, but I just cant figure out what..?

Jan,
why don't you give us your settings, ProRes is a codec, not a size. And in what size are your PNG files? Frame dimensions? And just to understand: these are frame grabs or stills that you're converting to PNG? And you can save directly out of FCP and import the resulting files into Motion, skipping compressor altogether.
Robb

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see image here:
http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/7885/fuzzytext9ld.jpg

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I have one timeline / project / edit that essentially references one long source clip / event / file.
I have a newer higher quality transcoded version of the same source and want to replace the original lower quality version and end up with the same edited result just with better quality images !?
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a_mumford wrote:
What if I wanted to to replace low res offline footage with finished colour-corrected material and output a finished master - would that be this clueless as well?
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Message was edited by: kiwikiwi

Thank you so much! Although it's not exporting quite as clear as before, it's much, MUCH better now that I've corrected the timeline dominance - I'd say 95% better; and it will be re-compressed by my clients for web streaming so it doesn't need to be perfect - but the initial quality was garbage.
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Message was edited by: kiwikiwi

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This comes up pretty off and was discussed in the last couple of days. You might do a forum search. Basically you'll looking at a lores display unless you look at the output on a video monitor.

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Thank you very much beforehand to anyone who is willing to look through this issue, it's been a long and frustrating process so far...
I am attempting to put together a stop motion animation in Final Cut Express but my exports are always either low quality, or medium quality and stretched. I am shooting on a Canon 5D Mark ii set to take pictures at 21M 5616x3744 [999] (though I'm not entirely sure what the 21M or 999 mean).
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I've decided just to try to get back to the export that I showed in the first screenshot. That result came before I started tampering with the Easy Setup. Like I said, when I changed the setup the canvas quality improved drastically and the dimensions seemed to fit much better, but the export was vertically stretched and cropped. I just reset my FCE settings and it turns out the default setup is DV-NTSC, but it's giving me a terrible quality still...
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Print PDF - really low quality?

Is there a way to adjust the quality settings of the PDFs that are output by selecting from the PDF menu on the print screen?
Whenever I do that the PDFs come out really really low quality. I would like them to be as close to the originals as possible, just in PDF form.

Hi rbi,
Thanks for the response.
I've done it from a bunch of different applications. Today I tried it from MS Word 08 and MS Excel 08. I'm using the PDF -> "Save as PDF..." option from the print dialogue box. I also have the Acrobat PDF printer and that looks fine but it takes MUCH longer to print (it usually sticks on "Starting Distiller job" for a long time).
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[link deleted by forum host]

>Should a pixel editor, at a non-100% zoom level, smooth things over to make them look good, so you might pass on viewing at 100%, falsely thinking the image is fine?
again, what if you want an overall view of your image, not just a 2"x4" secion of it? shouldn't you have that option via a toggle?
>Or should it use something similar to pixels from the image that might clue you in to a need to zoom to 100% to see if editing is needed? I vote for the latter, which Photoshop delivers.
it uses NOTHING similar to the image! it's nearest neighbor guesses are way off. I'd rather see the title bar go red as an indicator and see a closer representation of what the image is supposed to look like.
so that's 3 excuses now. 1) it's so you know what to go back and edit. no. becuase ANYTHING VIEWED AT A NON-100% ZOOM LEVEL IS INACURATE! 2) it's to protect you from saving when the image isn't really ready to be saved? no. becuase ANYTHING VIEWED AT A NON-100% ZOOM LEVEL IS INACURATE! 3) it should show you crap because then you know you need to go back and look at 100%. NO! because maybe you produced crap to begin with! :)
I hear what you're saying mike, and it's the closest to a reasonable explination in this thread, but wouldn't it be nice to allow the USER to choose what they see?

Bringing in an uncompressed .mov...when exported, comes out lower quality??

hello
i am dealing with a project using adobe flash cs3 and final cut pro 2 on a mac.
i am exporting a quicktime from flash and then bringing that .mov into FC to edit, add music, etc.
when i export from final cut, i see that the clip isnt as crisp as it was when i originally exported from flash?
im wondering what could be the issue. the clip itself is short, roughly ten seconds, although, even if my final result would be a 300 mb clip to still retain that perfect quality, i won't mind.
when i exported from flash, i had to do different trial and errors to get it to keep its full quality. the aspect ratio is 720X480 .. although upon export trying an NTSC it was extremly pixelated. i just ended up doing an uncompressed, no codec, quicktime export...having the final result be 350mb for ten seconds! either way, i love the final result. nice and crisp.
i brought this into final cut...heres the problem, what i am assuming is happening, is there is a setting wrong in the sequence settings. here is what i have it currently set to:
in the general tab:
frame size 720X480 NTSC DV (3:2)
pixel aspect ratio NTSC - CCIR 601
field dominace none
editing timebase 30
compressor non
quality 100%
advanced - compressor none / quality 100%
^^^ i thought maybe the whole ntsc issue is what causes the slight lower quality, considering even though it is the same aspect ratio its not dv footage but just an uncompressed flash video quicktime
^^^ i tried changing the aspect ratio next to frame size to custom/ custom (3:2) ... everytime i clicked okay, and re-opened the seq. settings, it resorted back to ntsc automatically
also the pixel aspect ratio section (the one directly under) only lets you choose ntsc , square pix, or hd - there wasn't even a custom thing to choose for that one
the problem with my final export is that is has slight artifacting on the edges of things...
maybe it isnt the sequence settings, for when i changed the settings to this, the little video box in the canvas of the fcp interface has no artifacting.
so possibly it can be the export settings in final cut?
if i do an export in FC which is an ntsc, it comes out extremly pixelated
the closest thing i can get to 100 quality is doing an uncompressed 10 bit....which is still causing the slight artifacting on the edges of objects.
any ideas of what i can do to fix this problem? it would be extremly appreciated and thank you so much for taking the time to read this.
thankyou,
-Mike

UPDATE:
i discovered a way,
upon export,
instead of choosing uncompressed, i chose custom,
i then typed in whatever and exported...came out clean.
i don't know what uncompressed 10 bit caused artifacting though

Compressor outputs low quality

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