High def quality loss

this may sound like a really silly question, but given that although you can import and edit hdv/ avcdh, there is no way at the moment of publishing high def projects in high def (other than apple tv). With that in mind, how much quality do you lose by burning a project onto DVD?
Thanks

You do NOT lose ALL the quality. That's a myth.
You lose resolution, but not so much quality. Starting with HD is like starting with movie film. The higher quality you start with, the better any DVD will look.
The export codec you use, the compressor you use, and the bit rate you use all make a difference in DVD quality. Plus, the filtering you perform in the HD to SD down-conversion.
You can make bad DVDs and you can make good DVDs.

Similar Messages

  • Apple tv video quality vs hd tv and high def dvd's

    ok...i know it supports 1080i, but does the video quality of video in itunes really look good compared against say a blu-ray disc, or hdtv signals? i'm sure it will get better (with a hardware or software upgrade?) if its not close to high def quality but want to know what i'm in store for if i buy appletv now...thanks. PS: i currently have directv HD and a ps3 for blu-ray, and my tv's are all HD...

    Based on my own testing, the distinctions between an HD-DVD movie (which are true 1080) and an Apple TV video converted as its own maximum settings (which is 720) is actually quite noticeable if you have a 1080 TV set, but at the same I don't consider it a show-stopper. I watch a lot of HD broadcast content that's only 720p, and it's still very good.
    An HD-DVD or Blu-Ray DVD will normally be in 1920 x 1080 resolution (1080p or 1080i, generally depending on your equipment). The Apple TV's maximum resolution is 1280 x 720 (basically 720p). Therefore, even an original HD-DVD or Blu-Ray DVD converted to Apple TV will need to be scaled down to 720p for display on the Apple TV.
    Further, Elgato EyeTV actually scales these down somewhat lower, so HDTV recorded content could be even worse-off, depending on the original source. The standard Apple TV export settings use a 960 x 540 frame in order to keep the bit-rate and frame rate within tolerances (since a 720p signal is approximately 60fps, and the bitrates will generally exceed 5-6 mbps, which pushes the limits of the Apple TV).
    Even more interestingly, Elgato's new turbo.264 dongle will only encode in "Apple TV" format at a maximum resolution of 800 x 600 (and if you do the math you will realize that this will be considerably less for a 16:9 aspect ratio video).
    The result is that videos converted from an EyeTV Hybrid are technically much worse off on the Apple TV than viewing the original source material. Whether this is significant enough to be noticeable will depend on your output medium, but on my 62" DLP, the difference is quite apparent (although still far superior to an SDTV signal).
    You can get 1280 x 720 content to play back at 60fps at 5mbps bit-rates on the Apple TV by using ffmpeg-based encoders and manually selecting higher settings, although it's been hit-and-miss in my own testing, and of course it creates gargantuan files. Elgato and others have obviously tried to stay with the more conservative settings to ensure that they can guarantee the broadcast possible range of support.
    In fact, although most of the standard encoder settings max out at 2.5-3.0 mbps, I've successfully pushed up to 6 mbps through the Apple TV, although such content has to be synced rather than streamed, since even an 802.11n network has a hard time keeping up (it worked, but there were some drop-outs and glitches in the process). Of course, 6mbps content is going to fill up the Apple TV hard drive pretty quickly as well (you'd only be able to fit around 11 hours on the internal 40GB hard drive).
    The other thing to keep in mind with DVD movies is that they come from film, which is a 24fps source (based on the physical nature of film). As a result, the distinctions between a 720p and 1080i signal are less prevalant when dealing with film content, since you won't get the full 60fps HDTV capabilities anyway. Interlacing can still create some nasty side-effects, but it's far less of an issue when you're dealing with less than half of the normal frames.
    In my own experiences, I have an Apple TV that is connected to a 1080p upscaling DLP TV (native 1080i input, internalized de-interlacing), and a second Apple TV that is connected to a 720p LCD TV. With the first Apple TV, I can notice the difference between 720p and 1080i output settings only when viewing photos, since the remainder of the standard content doesn't exceed 720p anyway. Further, because my TV de-interlaces a 1080i signal to 1080p, I don't get the flicker that is normally associated with a 1080i signal.
    On the second Apple TV, I leave the setting to 720p, since that's the native resolution of the second TV, and I get noticeable interlacing-based flickering on the 1080i, particularly with photo slideshows (mostly in the transitions).

  • Downloading High Def Mini DV through Macbook pro to external hard drive

    Hi, I am making a 90min High def documentary with the hopes of selling it comercialy. I purchased a Sony hdr-hc7 and we shot 28 hours of footage with another 30 hrs to come. My plan is to rent a tape deck to download the DVM-63HD Mini DV Video Cassettes through my Macbook pro to an external hard drive.
    My question is will I lose the High Def quality because I only have one firewire 400 input and will have to daisy chain the tape deck through the back of the external Hard drive. I asume that I'll need about 2000 gbs of external storage for the project, correct? Also, will my system be able to handle the editing, compresion and then creation of a master (maybe renting a Blue ray disc burner).
    I have a macbook pro 15" with 1gb ddr2 sdram 667 mhz speed. There is a Bank 0 and a Bank 1 slot for ram that list have ing 1gb of ram (does this mean there are 2gb of ram?). Also, the firewire is 400mb/sec. Graphics card is an ATY,RadeonX1600. I'm using final cut pro 5.1.4. that I bought with finalcut studio pro.

    Hi(Bonjour)!
    If you use Apple Intermediate Codec to capture, you'll need 12 to 15 meg/second of space, that's an hefty 45 to 48 gig. for one hour. ( an external hard disk about 58 X 48 gig: 2784 gig ...)
    As I read in FCS2 additionnal documentation regarding work in HDV and other formats, you can capture HDV natively (same hard drive space than regular mini DV), but you will need more processor power to display and scroll content than media captured with AIC.
    Michel Boissonneault

  • IMovie HD6: HDV to AIC to HDV... quality loss?

    Hi All,
    I'm curious, when I use my normal workflow (HDV to AIC (imovie 6) to HDV), does it lose quality?
    If so:
    * Is there a way to avoid this?
    * How much quality is lost? Is there a visual comparison available?
    Thanks for any input!

    Dear catspaw,
    Here are my thoughts, based on my experiences, and what I think I understand of all this..
    1. Standard-definition DV (those little tapes, or the larger 'broadcast' tapes) is pretty much compression-free ..we-ell, strictly speaking there's some, but relatively little, compression used in DV. It looks perfect, although it is slightly compressed. The material recorded onto tape - and imported into iMovie - contains every frame which the camcorder optics see. So editing it is simple: all the frames get copied into iMovie, and you can chop out, or insert, anything you want. Using iMovie HD 6, or earlier, you can then copy the edited material back to a DV camcorder ..all the frames get shuffled out of the computer and back onto tape again. (You can't do that with iMovie '08, as it has no option to Export to Camcorder.) What you see in iMovie - after importing from a DV camcorder - isn't exactly the same as what you've imported, because iMovie runs on a computer, and uses a computer display, and that generally shows complete "progressive" frames of video, whereas a TV ..or TVs with cathode ray tubes; precursors to the latest LCD or DLP or plasma TVs.. will generally show interlaced 'half-frames' one after the other, each comprising half the TV picture, but shown in such rapid succession that they blur into each other, and our brains see a succession of complete frames.
    (..Here's a good visual representation from one of Adam Wilt's pages:
    ..There are two 'fields' of video, each made of half the entire number of lines down the screen, superimposed on each other, and blending into a full frame of video comprised of all the lines. That's what happens on a TV screen when the interlaced 'fields' of video blend together..)
    So standard-def DV is really plain and simple, and there should be no quality loss after shooting, importing, editing, exporting.
    2. Hi-def. A can of worms. There are several different varieties of "hi-def". What we're working with in our 'amateur' movie program, iMovie, is generally the HDV version of hi-def, or the AVCHD version. (And a few people may be working with JVC's version of 'progressive' frames, but with a lower total number of lines down the screen: 720p, instead of 1080i. 720p has 720 pixels down the screen, and records and presents an entire 'progressive' ..one-line-after-the-other.. frame of video at a time, whereas 1080i shows 1080 pixels down the screen, consisting of half that number, 540; all the 'odd-numbered' lines.. at a time, immediately followed by the other half ..the even-numbered lines.. slotting in-between the previous lot. That repeating pair of 540 'interleaved' lines gives a total of 1080 interlaced lines in every frame. Movement appears smoother using 1080i (..after all, the picture is refreshed twice as often as with single-complete-frame 'progessive' video..) but may not look as super-sharp as progressive video, because at any moment there's only half the total information of a frame onscreen. 'Interlaced' video is smoother, and any action flows more "creamily", whereas 'progressive' may be considered 'sharper' (..it is if you freeze a frame..) but more jerky.)
    So our 'amateur' hi-def movies may be recorded as HDV, AVCHD or some other similar format. 'Professional', or broadcast-intended, hi-def may consist of several other non-amateur formats, some of which are completely uncompressed and require extremely fast links between the cameras and recording equipment, and massive-capacity hard discs to capture and edit the huge quantity of data which such cameras..
    ..deliver ..for $150,000. Or here's a remote-control broadcast hi-def camera for (only) $7,995..
    (..Tell me if I'm boring you..)
    The hi-def cameras which we're more likely to be using..
    ..record compressed video in MPEG-2 format, or H.264, or some similar codec. The idea behind HDV was that the companies which make 'consumer-grade' (amateur) camcorders wanted a method to record hi-def - with about 4x the data of standard-def - onto the little miniDV tapes which we were all familiar with. So a method was found to squeeze 4x the data onto a tape which normally records standard-def DV data at 25 megabits per second. The method decided upon was MPEG-2 ..the same codec which is used to squeeze a two-hour Hollywood film onto a little 4.7GB capacity DVD. (Bollywood movies, as distinct from Hollywood movies, tend to be three hours long!)
    If MPEG-2 was good enough for the latest cinema releases, in nice, sharp, sharper-than Super-VHS form, then it was thought to be good enough for 'domestic' hi-def recordings. The only awkward thing about that - from an editing point of view.. (..but which of the camcorder manufacturers are seriously interested in editing..? ..they primarily want to sell 'product' which - according to their advertising - is terrific at simply recording and playing-back video. Like car advertising shows you how wonderful cars are to sit in and for travelling to places, but the adverts don't tell you about how tricky it may be to get into the rear sidelights and replace a blown bulb..) ..is that in HDV there's only one 'real' frame for every 15 frames recorded on the tape. The other 14 are just indications of what's different between the various frames. Therefore, for editing, the 'missing' frames must be rebuilt during import into iMovie.
    Steve Jobs heralded 2005 - at MacWorld, you may remember - as the "Year of HD!" ..It became possible to import and edit hi-def in iMovie ..that is, the HDV version of hi-def, not the uncompressed 'professional' broadcast version of hi-def, of course.. but ONLY with a fast enough computer ..and many weren't fast enough to import and convert HDV to editable-format in real-time (..no mention of it being the year you would import at half, or a quarter, or an eighth, real-time ..ugh-ugh).
    So HDV gets converted to AIC to make it editable ..and then what d'you do with it? ..Few (none of them?) HDV camcorders let you import HDV back to tape from iMovie. No Macs had/have Blu-Ray burners ..although you can burn about 20 mins of hi-def onto normal DVDs with a Mac's normal inbuilt SuperDrive DVD burner with the appropriate software ..DVD Studio Pro, or Toast, etc.
    (..Once again, there was some omission from the hoopla ..yes; you can import HDV! ..yes; you can edit HDV! ..er, no, sorry; no mention that you can't burn a 1 hour hi-def home video onto a hi-def DVD with a Mac ..iDVD would/will only burn in standard-def, and there are no Blu-Ray burners built into Macs..)
    Then came AVCHD (Advanced Video Codec; High Definition). This compresses video even more than HDV (whose compression is pretty much invisible, and is in regular use for broadcast material) by using a different method. And along came progressive hi-def recording, trying to supersede HDV's generally 'interlaced' 1080i hi-def.
    But the problem with progressive, non-interlaced AVCHD is that if there's rapid movement in a scene - if you move the camera, or something rapidly crosses the picture - instead of the "creamy flow" of interlaced video, there's a jerky lurch from one frame to the next. And with the added extra compression of AVCHD this jerkiness can be (..to my mind..) even more horribly evident.
    Anyway, unscrambling ..and then re-assembling.. hi-def interlaced MPEG-2 HDV is pretty much invisible - to me, anyway. The video looks sharp, moves smoothly, looks 'true-to-life' and doesn't have terrible artifacts and jerks.
    Unscrambling ..and then re-assembling.. hi-def interlaced or progressive AVCHD (..which is sometimes described as MPEG-4 or H.264..) - I know that you know this, but I'm also writing for others here - isn't quite as simple as doing the same for tape-based MPEG-2 hi-def HDV. Here's all the gobbledegook about what AVCHD can consist of.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_AVC
    ..Oh, and here's a bit about the "usability" of AVCHD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD
    There are many more 'varieties' of encoding in AVCHD than in 'simpler' hi-def, such as HDV. There's less data sent in an AVCHD data stream than HDV (..AVCHD has jumped from 17MBits/sec to 24MBits/sec ..just below HDV's 25MBits/sec..) so the video is more compressed than HDV. And there are all sorts of video formats (interlaced, progressive, HD, 'Full' HD) which are recorded by different cameras under the all-embracing 'AVCHD' label. iMovie - or a Mac - has to work much harder to unscramble and convert the more-compressed AVCHD format(s) than uncompressing HDV. And has to work harder to compress the output of iMovie to H.264 (an AVCHD codec) than when re-compressing to MPEG-2 (the codec for standard-def DVDs and hi-def HDV).
    To - finally! - come back to your question "..is there therefore no advantage in using DV tape-based vidcams for editing purposes.." I'd say that there ARE advantages in using tape-based vidcams for editing purposes ..using your two categories:
    1. Non-hi-def tape-based DV is ..to all intents and purposes.. lossless. And the material can be imported in real-time, and be output - with no loss - in real-time, too, using any Mac from an old G3 onwards. Importing non-tape material into iMovie ..e.g; miniDVDs, or chip-based, more compressed video.. is more long-winded, and generally has to go through various external bits of software (..e.g; MPEG Streamclip or somesuch..) to put it into a format that's editable in iMovie. AVCHD can, theoretically - as 'AVC', without the 'HD' - be used for recording in standard-def, but there are currently few AVCHD camcorders which are built to record standard-def video as well ..there is the Sony HDR-SR12. But only iMovie running on an Intel-powered Mac will decode AVCHD, apart from separate standalone Mac software such as 'Voltaic'.
    2. Hi-def tape-based recording IS an advantage on anything that's less than the fastest, or highest-powered, of Macs, because it needs less "horsepower" to "unpack" the compressed data and to get it into an editable format through recovering, or rebuilding, the necessary individual frames. I think it's an advantage in every case, as not only can tape-based hi-def be edited on older, slower Macs (including pre-Intel Macs) but also:
    (a) HDV data's less compressed, and so motion is generally expressed - currently - more "fluidly" than with the more compressed hard-disc or chip-stored AVCHD,
    (b) HDV original material is "self-archived" onto its tapes ..you don't have to "empty" a camcorder's hard disc or memory chips onto something else - such as a separate hard drive - in order to re-use, or continue using, the camcorder: you just drop in another cheap 1-hour tape,
    (c) Tape-containing camcorders tend to be heavier, less lightweight, than fewer-moving-parts chip-based AVCHD camcorders. They're therefore inherently less "wobbly" and don't tremble so much in your hand ..that gives smoother, less "jiggled-about" recordings ..even taking into account the stabilisation built into most camcorders,
    (d) Tape-based camcorders are less likely to lose an entire 'shoot' by being dropped or mis-treated. Material already recorded onto a tape will not be damaged if you drop the camera and its tape-heads thereby become misaligned. The data can be recovered by simply ejecting the tape and popping it into another camcorder. If a hard-disc camcorder is dropped, subsequent head misalignment may mean that all data already on the hard disc is irrecoverable. If a memory chip becomes corrupted, all data may similarly become irrecoverable. If a tape becomes damaged, it's usually only a few seconds' worth which be lost. (..I dropped a tape-based camcorder in the sea when I was trying to get shots of waves coming in onto the beach from an offshore viewpoint, and a wave washed right over me and knocked me down. The camcorder was a write-off, but I managed to prise the tape out, and recover the 30 minutes of movie I'd already recorded. I don't really want to test it, but I have doubts about whether I'd have been able to recover my video from a similarly-drowned hard-disc based camcorder ..maybe, in the interests of factual objectivity I'll try it some day with an old, no-longer-used 2.5" hard disc..)
    (e) AVCHD camcorders - unless you're looking at 'semi-pro' or professional 'cost-a-plenty' record-to-chip camcorders, or that Sony HD12..
    ..are generally built for "point-and-shoot" amateurs. This means that AVCHD camcorders generally do not have the assortment of manual controls which you find on most tape-based HDV camcorders (..because the camcorder makers also aim, or aimed, HDV at low-cost broadcast users, too). There's usually far greater flexibility and more shooting options (shutter speeds, exposure, audio handling) on tape-based HDV camcorders than can be found on AVCHD camcorders. If you're just pointing and shooting, that doesn't matter ..but if you want to shoot good-looking video, there are generally - and it is a generalisation - more adjustment options to be found on a tape-based camcorder than on a chip-based or hard-disc AVCHD camcorder. In my experience - yours may be different - people tempted by AVCHD camcorders tend to buy (..and manufacturers tend to publicise..) high pixel counts (like "Full HD 1920x1080") and that magic word "progressive" (perhaps because it has the flavour, in English, of "futuristic" or "more advanced") rather than their being concerned with choices of apertures or shutter speeds and the clearest representation of what the camcorder's pointing at.
    In summary ..at last!.. "..is there therefore no advantage in using DV tape-based vidcams for editing purposes.." Yes; the advantages, I believe, are that HDV converts fast into AIC for editing; my perception is that HDV delivers smoother action (onscreen movement) than AVCHD; and with a suitable deck..
    ..HDV can be returned back to tape, whereas it's more long-winded and needs more subterfuge to export AVCHD back to a chip, or a camcorder's hard disc, for in-camera replay ..and thence out to an HDTV.
    As always, these are simply my opinions ..others may disagree.

  • When is it time to invest in a high-def editing setup?

    I own a ten year old digital editing appliance that I'm considering replacing with Final Cut Pro. I want to start work on some niche documentaries that I plan to sell online. I made one documentary at home about six years ago that I still sell online.
    I've never bought a HD TV because I don't watch broadcast television. I find conventional DVDs on high-def screens very grainy in image quality ... downright unwatchable ... so to this day I still watch all my DVDs (homemade and store-bought) on a big tube television set.
    Personally, I don't want a high-def TV for watching old movies and 70's TV shows on DVD. I'm perfectly happy with my tube TV, my 2001-era editor, and my twelve year old standard-definition Sony PD150 cancorder which I just had serviced and cleaned.
    Heck, 20% of my viewing pleasure still comes from videocassettes, which I can get at the Goodwill for 25 cents a piece.
    But ... now... I have some ideas for some new niche video products. Only problem is ... I haven't followed the conversation about high-def at all. I'm wholly and utterly ignorant. Pretty much all I know is that BluRay won the format war … and I know I can look up 720p, 1080p, 1080i should that information become important.
    That's the extent of my knowledge. I honestly have no idea whether my Sony PD-150, my old editor, and single-layer DVDs would be just fine ... or whether they would result in a bunch of refund requests when I start selling these new DVDs I want to make.
    God help me. I just don't keep up with what other people are doing.
    And googling "do-I-need-to-dump-my-90's-era-digital-camcorder-and-standard-definition-editing- appliance-in-favor-of-ten-thousand-dollars-worth-of-new-high-def-cam-and-editing -gear-if-I'm-going-to-make-another-sellable-DVD" didn't really yield much.
    Can anyone help me here?
    1) Is anyone in the lower-mid-range video business … like a budget wedding guy or a niche how-to video … still using standard-def stuff to churn out acceptable product in high volume?
    I've sold hundreds of copies of my DVD online and two weeks ago I got my first ever refund request … the guy berated me for selling a DVD in standard definition when (he said) the "commercial standard" now is high-def. No one else has ever complained. So now I'm left wondering if this guy is the first of a new generation of customers who would not tolerate a standard-def product … or if he's just a dork who needed to complain about something.
    2) How does manufacturing a high number of copies of a high-def video work? My 50-minute standard-def movie fit wonderfully on an inexpensive 4.7GB DVD. Running off copies was cheap and painless. I understand that high-def discs are some 25GB. Are you guys with your new Mac and Final Cut Pro working with HD buying these expensive discs for large volume runs? Are even decent bread-and-butter wedding shoots or corporate training films these days getting burned to BluRays?
    3) Does it make sense to trade in a perfectly good 90's high-end standard definition digital cam for a new HD cam when I'm still going to burn it to a conventional DVD?
    4) Is my gear still perfectly acceptable for budget projects? I really don't want to pay for Final Cut Pro and a HD burner ... I would only get one if my old editor is flat-out obsolete, which it certainly isn't for editing home movies.
    Note: "Budget" does not mean poorhouse. I'm talking about "working" niche videos … competent (non-broadcast) megachurch sermon DVDs … homemade documentaries … non-Rolls-Royce weddings … small business promo videos ...
    … the stuff that working joe videos are made of.
    What constitutes "reasonable and acceptable" these days, when just about everybody has a high-def TV set they're watching these things on?

    When I made the move from SD it was painful. It was just before the digital broadcast change over and when I hooked up my new Samsung 37" HD TV to my cable box I almost hurled.
    since then, almost all of the broadcasters have caught up with HD transmission and almost all broadcast stuff in 1080i or 720p look amazing.
    Standard Def DVDs are another story. Well done commercial SD DVDs can look quite nice when playing back through my new Samsung Blu-ray player. The folks who compress down to SD for the big studios are indeed rocket scientists and they're doing things that most of us simply can't afford to do.
    Plus, the scaling technology in players and TVs has come a long way as well. So Don't throw out your standard DVDs just yet.
    Should you consider a Hi Def camera? I'd say Yes, The time has come. If all you were doing was posting 480P online I'd say use your camera til it croaks. but the optical delivery is a factor for you.
    Authoring your own BD for mass duplication? That's a little more complicated still. There are licensing issues involved in Blu-ray authoring which are complex. It's one of the reasons that we probably won't see Blu-ray hardware in Macs for a while. I don't think you can duplicate as easily as you can with DVD. You can burn your own one at a time if that's a possibility for you.
    Shooting HD and delivering SD DVDs? It can be done. But compressing so that you end up with a satisfactory product is sort of a black art. You'll see lot's of discussions online about how many people are disappointed with HD to DVD, some claiming that their SD to DVD projects actually look better.
    My latest technique for getting respectable DVDs is to first downrez in Mpeg Streamclip to an anamorphic SD file still in the Prores codec. Then I use Bitvice to do the mpeg2 file.
    The bottom Line.
    If you can afford it, get a new camera, BD burner and learn how to author BD. The authoring software is not fully baked yet for mac users but you should definitely head in that direction ASAP. You can even incorporate SD footage in an HD timeline and the SD footage is much more palatable than SD DVD.
    On the up-side, you might be happy to know that you missed the worst of it. Be thankful that you were able to put it off so long. There are many other people out there who rode the bleeding edge and suffered a great deal of economic and emotional trauma.
    good Luck!
    g

  • Trying to get High Def Picture/Video to my 40" LCD. Help

    Hey all
    I have recently brough a MacBook Pro 2.33,
    I have downloaded some videos & TV eps which are in High Def (720). On the MacBook they look brilliant, I wanted to hook the Macbook up to my Samsung 40" LCD and then hopefully be able to watch my High Def videos on the big screen in crystal clear quality, So I hooked up the macbook to my TV via a DVI - HDMI Cable and got the display on the LCD, which looks ok, Thought it would be perfect as it was just using it like a Monitor. I played with the resolutions to get the best fitting picture as there doesnt seem to be the Native Res for my LCD, I always end up loosing a tiny bit of the screen at the top & the bottom, but not too fussed about that, So i was playing my High Def Videos but they are definatly not in the quality that they look like on my Macbook, Very bitmappy etc..
    Wonder if you lot can offer an advise as to how I can use the Macbook to get true High Def picture to my LCD
    Thanks in advance
    Cube Design
    PS. Obviously all this will give me Video out, but hows the best way to get sound out? just a headphone to phono lead into my amp?

    Large screen displays don't necessarily have a 1:1 pixel mapping. Ideally you should find out what your display's native resolution is, and pick something close to that. 720 is 1280x720, 1080 is 1920x1080. Your TV may only accept those resolutions... it's a TV and not a monitor.
    My Pioneer (connected to my mac mini) is receiving 1280x720 and the menu bar barely shows on the screen due to overscan but movies look great.
    You can turn on underscan (picture is shrunk to avoid overscan) on a tab on the Displays preference pane, provided your Mac detected that it was a TV.

  • Huge quality loss in iMove '11

    Hello fellow iMovie users.
    Yesterday I upgraded to iLife 11 to get the new iMovie and its "new" audio editing capabilities. I could ofcourse just buy it from Mac App Store, but I am principally against App Store and its strict rules, so I choosed to get it the old way.
    Anyway, I liked what i saw. Finally the new iMovie was about as good as the five year old one, and had some neat features like chroma key and cropping.
    So I decided to start practicing and create a short video based on some old DV-videos filmed with my Canon MV950 DV-PAL camera.
    I imported the footage into iMovie, and noticed some significant quality loss after the import.
    And it get worse. After I exported the video, it seems like it is heavily compressed, even if I'm exporting to QuickTime and selects the highest quality possible.
    I have some screenshots to show you the differences.
    This is the original DV-footage.
    The imported video. Notice the higher compression and the choppy edges.
    And this is the exported video. Notice the insanely bad quality, especially in dark areas.
    Is there any way to fix this, or do I have go back to iMovie HD?
    PS. Sorry if my post is a bit unreadable. I'm from Norway.

    Steve,
    While I agree everyone should have owned a HD camera by now, there are a lot of low-end SD cameras that are still being sold today. In this era of our economy, consumers are sensitive to prices; especially low or lower prices.
    And unlike the video camcorder boom of the 80s with Sony introducing the Video8 handycam (shoulder mounted camcorder), people today do not video using traditional camcorders. Most either do it through a digital camera, DSLR, iPhone or blogger cameras and are already mostly in an acceptable progressive format. There is nothing wrong with DV style cam. Canon GL-2 and the Panasonic DVX-100 are still commanding such a very high price tag for cameras of older technology and still being repaired goes to show that there are people out there still using it.
    If one can convert quality interlaced footage into quality progressive footage, you can use that footage and create good results using iMovie 11. I agree with you and Tom that iMovie 11 captures interlaced footage in full. But what's the use if it can't make a good product in the end that looks like what iMovie 6HD can do and when there are PC software out there including the free Windows Movie Maker that can do this with no problem.
    Consumers, unlike some of us, only relate to past software used and are usually benign to the fact of progressive vs interlaced. I have dealt with some mis-informed customers that they believed FULL HD only means 1080p at 60fps; anything else is not. I digress.
    With Mac users, they don't necessarily follow the same upgrade frequency as PC users either. Macs generally last a lot longer between upgrades compared to a PC because they don't have to run a barage of virus/spam/anti-malware growing definition files which ultimately slow an otherwise healthy PC down. Macs do not have to worry about this.

  • I need to clarify before Purchase of High Def Cam

    Probably a stupid question, hope its the right thread, but hey! so here goes:
    I'm new to high def and about to purchase an HD cam. As Apple and BluRay arent the best of friends at the moment (maybe a bit strong?!), i.e don't have the full array of output options as you do with SD, Im assuming I can just edit away in either AVCHD or HDV without the use of any other third party s/ware and just using my Finalcut Studio 2 I am able to produce a standard definition DVD in DVD Studio Pro?

    Unless you are using a hardware assist like the AJA HDIO or one the the blackmagic devices, which will connect to an HDV camera and do the transcode on capture, capturing HDV over firewire and transcoding to ProRes 422 causes a significant lag: that is, when you stop the camera the process continues for some time. I don't even know if you can do a full one hour tape, for example. That said (which I read on this board), in my limited tests to a single, internal SATA drive (the second one, not the system drive) on my G5 Quad, at least two minutes were captured using the ProRes422 for HDV "easy setup" without any lag (two clips, starts a new clip at camera start/stop), and the display showing "real time capture" the entire two minutes.
    But, while capturing HDV to a ProRes sequence, you can only do "capture now" and not capture and log. So if you need to recapture for whatever reason, you don't just get to use the log. You basically position the tape where you want it, start up "log and capture" and a screen appears, starts up your tape and begins capturing until you hit escape. There is an annotation in the window indicating how much behind things might be. Mine said "capture in real time" for my two minute test. A new clip is created on each camera start/stop, however.
    So, if you are willing live without log and capture, it's a faster way to to as you note.
    Oh, and AVCHD is a more consumer format with lower quality (so far) than HDV. HDV is 25mb/s; AVCHD is around 17mb/s, and with claims of true HD (1920x1080 rather than HDV's 1440x1080), there is significantly more compression. Check out camcorderinfo.com for some camera reviews of both types where compression and its artifacts are discussed.
    Ed
    Message was edited by: Edward A. Oates
    Message was edited by: Edward A. Oates
    Message was edited by: Edward A. Oates

  • How to maintain high image quality of still images

    Hello,
    I have been creating flipbooks out of still images shot on a canon MK II. They are 8 mp files and look great blown up large in photoshop, however, once imported into iMovie through iPhoto and played as a sequence in rapid succession they seem to lose quality. They appear slightly compressed or otherwise a little pixelated. A get info on an individual frame says it is is less than 200 KB when the original file is 3 mb. Is there a setting I am missing or other technique for maintaining the images' high quality after being brought into this rapid slideshow? Should I be using final cut to achieve this type of high quality?
    thanks!

    The following works well. Save your images in photoshop as TIFF files, with a resolution of 1920 x 1080, 72 pixels per. Save to the desktop. Drag into imovie. Make sure your imovie is hd 1080i. Use the Ken Burns to expand the picture to fill the black spaces, if you so desire.
    At that point, you'll have a super high def show.
    Hope this helps.

  • Buring DVD in High Def

    I have a Canon AVCHD camcorder. Can I burn my movies in High Def on my Mac?

    Yes, you can - iMovie supports HD (and it'll be excellent quality, but not blu-ray quality) and you can get up to 2 hours on one DVD. You might want to open iMovie, click on Help and type in HD quality - it will give you lots of information on HD quality, file size, etc.
    Another option would be to consider purchasing Toast (including their HD plugin); they claim you can burn blu-ray quality onto regular DVDs (that would be where you'd get about 30 minutes of video onto a regular DVD). Check it here:
    http://www.roxio.com/enu/products/toast/
    (click on compare and the popup will show that you can author HD content to DVD)
    Check the iMovie compatibility list for your camcorder here:
    https://support.apple.com/kb/HT3290
    If you have a problem importing into iMovie, I'd suggest posting a question in the iMovie forum; there are some very knowledgeable people over there.

  • Major Quality loss when editing in Iphoto 09

    Hi,
    I am a new user to Imac and Iphoto and I saw that when I edit an Image in Iphoto, I loose a lot of my original data.
    I have found that I can return to the original picture, but I wish to edit (especially using the CROP function) then print the Image on 20x30 cm size and therefore I need all the quality I can get.
    When I Crop either JPEG or .RAW formatted images (for example 10 MBytes in size) even if I select the COMPLETE image, I am left with only 4 or 5 Mbytes of data.
    It gets much worse when I really Crop a part of the picture.
    A 12 Mega pixel photo should supply sufficient data to cover a complete wall, but for some reason a lot of quality is lost when I use any of the editing features.
    Am I doing something wrong ?
    Should I change any of the settings ?
    Thanks for your advice

    Welcome to the Apple Discussions.
    the only difference is that Iphoto took my quality !!
    Are you basing the "quality" loss on visual appearance of the photo or on the resulting size of the jpeg file? If it's the latter that is really not an accurate method. True, some information is lost with a jpeg edit and save (only the first edit in iPhoto results in additional jpeg compression) but, in my experience, you would have to print a VERY large print before seeing any noticeable image degradation. I've compressed jpegs as high as 60%, i.e. a quality setting of 40, and for most all uses up to 5x7 prints haven't seen noticeable image degradation. However, I realize image quality is subjective and open to individual interpretation.
    So unless you are visibly seeing image degradation I wouldn't worry about the file size reduction, especially in iPhoto as it's compressed only once no matter how many edits are made and saved. Apple uses a compression algorithm that gives the best image quality for the amount of compression it uses.
    The following is from the Usernet FAQ site article "JPEG image compression FAQ, part 1/2':
    Subject: [4] How well does JPEG compress images?
    Very well indeed, when working with its intended type of image (photographs and suchlike). For full-color images, the uncompressed data is normally 24 bits/pixel. The best known lossless compression methods can compress such data about 2:1 on average. JPEG can typically achieve 10:1 to 20:1 compression without visible loss, bringing the effective storage requirement down to 1 to 2 bits/pixel. 30:1 to 50:1 compression is possible with small to moderate defects, while for very-low-quality purposes such as previews or archive indexes, 100:1 compression is quite feasible. An image compressed 100:1 with JPEG takes up the same space as a full-color one-tenth-scale thumbnail image, yet it retains much more detail than such a thumbnail.
    Read more: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/jpeg-faq/part1/#ixzz0UKB59gND
    Message was edited by: Old Toad

  • Export quality loss

    I must be missing something. Is there some place I can read all about codecs and video formats and how to export from FCE without massive quality losses?
    Typical example:
    I download a one-minute video in MPEG-4 format. It's 114MB, 1280x720, uses AAC and H.264 codecs, and data rate is 14 Mbit/sec. The QuickTime inspector says "millions" (of colors, presumably) and 60 fps. Video quality is excellent.
    I edit it in FCE, and when I try to export it, there is severe quality loss, even when I set the bit rate very high.
    Can somebody clue me in as to what I need to do to preserve the original quality?
    Message was edited by: G Robert Lewis

    Thanks. I got through the use of MPEG Streamclip OK, but I'm at a loss how to create an HD sequence that matches the clip's specs. None of the "settings" or "preferences" or "properties" I've looked at seem to cover the needed options. "Easy Setup" came the closest, but a matching resolution spec wasn't available.

  • Image Quality Loss in Captivate 7

    I'm creating a webinar in Captivate 7. The project dimensions are 540x420. When I insert an image and resize it to fit the template there is a great deal of quality loss. For example, when I inserted the chart below and resized it, the chart's gridlines disappear and the text becomes very fuzzy.
    If I zoom in (Ctrl +) the quality returns, as shown below.
    Can I be certain when the project is published that the quality of any images I insert will return to normal? Or is there a "view high resolution" option like in Adobe InDesign that I can turn on?

    No you cannot.  The only way to be certain that an image will not suffer any additional quality loss is to publish the image at exactly 100% of its original dimensions.  Any resizing will always result in degradation to some extent.

  • Want to make first high-def DVD

    I would like to start burning high-def DVDs. After searching this forum, it seems that (a) iDVD is not yet set up to burn full high-def video to DVD and (b) Toast 10 might be the best option.
    How do I determine if my Mac Pro has the appropriate hardware to burn to a blu-ray DVD? Will Toast 10 burn to a blu-ray DVD that will work in a blu-ray player? If the duration of the video is sufficiently short, can it be burned to a standard DVD and, if so, will it play back in full high-def on a blu-ray player?

    If you want to make a homemade DVD look professional, you need:
    1. Cameras with better color
    2. Tripod
    3. Excellent lighting
    4. Professional encoder for mpeg2; with software, set it to multipass and maximum quality. It may take many times real time to encode
    5. Proper shooting techniques, so that you're not always moving or panning, which would tax the encoder
    6. Color correction, to make it as vivid as desired
    7. Proper optics, i.e. something with a short depth of field to add complexity to the image
    8. Proper directing
    9. A format of film or video which is not highly compressed (like HDV or AVCHD) and introduces artifacts
    10. A proper soundtrack and sound editor, which will make it "look" better
    11. Dual layer discs allow you to increase your bitrate
    So, a homemade DVD and a professional one have very little in common. The fact that they are both SD has little to do with anything.
    Jeremy

  • Display size query, + quality loss from iMovie originals

    Learning to work the iDVD process, but what is the word on a foolproof sizing method, such that the thing will display OK on any TV? I don't see any way to restrict display size in iMovie, and what good is the TV Safe check, if you can't control the display size?? Also is quality loss inevitable? I'm compiling the DVD from separate files, less than 1 gb ea. I used "full quality" Quicktime compressed versions from the original iMovie file (which look fine in QT); then pulled those back in to iMovie, then shared to iDVD. One of the files looks fine encoded, but the other has weird sizzling-oil standing wave artifacts, even on still scenes from jpegs. Looking for help/comment/expressions of sympathy
    Thanks,
    John
    Houston TX

    Hi v
    Quality of the DVD-disc depends on several things.
    • Highes Quality isn't Top - better is Best Performances (up to 60 min movie)
    confused naming - in iDVD'08 there is Pro Quality AND I like it.
    • Media brand - I use Verbatim
    • Type: DVD-R my choise no DVD+R or +/-RW
    • I save a Disc-Image and burn this at an as SLOW speed as possibly (eg x1) with Toast™
    (Disc Util tool can also do this)
    • I DON'T USE the function Share/Export to iDVD from within iMovie - IT IS DESTRUCTIVE !!
    Just drop the movie project icon (with a Star on it) into iDVD theme window - then iDVD do the
    rendering and so much better. Especially if there is photos in the movie.
    • Free space on internal (start-up) hard disc - should be about 25Gb when all material is imported
    and structured. This for iDVD to work with - iDVD can't use an extern hard disc as scratch.
    (less than 5Gb - result is most probably of no use at all)
    This is what come's first to my mind.
    Yours Bengt W

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