Is IChat to Ichat better quality than Skype?

I have a Mac and I use Skype to AV chat to a PC overseas. Would I see better picture quality If they used a Mac overseas and we went Ichat to Ichat?

According to this post ichat is better than skype when chatting mac-mac.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1238443

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Is m4v better quality than a remuxed MKV file via Subler?

I'm slowly building my home media server and putting my Blu-Ray's onto it. I normally do a Handbrake conversion for ATV3, so the MKV files end up being significantly smaller m4v's and the quality is outstanding. But I recently learned about the quick remux method using Subler, which quickly converts the MKV container into an m4v container without any quality loss and while keeping the same size file. But I noticed that, say, a 29GB MKV file is a much poorer softer picture on my plasma TV than the same movie that's only a 9GB MKV file (remuxed to m4v with subler for streaming over ATV3). I'm running a 300mbps cable modem so the streaming shouldn't be a problem over my home wifi. But I also noticed that the smaller m4v's (say a 3.5GB file that comes from a 9GB MKV file via Handbrake) seem to be slightly better quality than the 9GB file that was remuxed. So it seems like the larger file should be even higher quality -- but I'm getting better results with a smaller file that's Handbrake'd from MKV to m4v.
Is there some sort of streaming setting on the ATV3 that needs to be set or adjusted that will allow the full gorgeous pic quality of a 29GB file to stream right through to it, and look better than the Handbrake'd m4v file? It feels like there's a bottleneck somewhere that's not letting all of the complete picture information through, and an intact, perfect 29GB file should look light years better than that 29GB file Handbrake'd down to 4GB. Trying to figure this out before I continue down this home media server path cuz it's a lot of work to do these Blu's one at a time.
Kirby

I have no experience of the remuxing you describe, but interesting observations.
There is nothing you can adjust on AppleTV - it will either play the encoded movie or it won't.
AppleTv's generally playback the h264 codec (in an m4v container) - there are many many versions/levels of this codec and each generation of AppleTv has been able to play slightly more sophisticated versions.
I suspect but cannot prove that the issue you notice is due to AppleTV attempting to support advanced h264 features but making compromises which affect playback quality - in other words it is cutting corners to playback advanced h264 profile features rather than refusing. Handbrake on the other hand has time at its disposal - it has been refined over many years by dedicated enthusiasts so if a simple remux is all that's required i'd be surprised they have not implemented that. Instead I suspect it more accurately processes enhanced h264 features before transcoding into a new smaller m4v file. Equally there might be settings in HB which artificially sharpen or otherwise alter the video which you prefer. I'd compare the BluRay tothe remuxed or HB versions to attempt to decide which was more faithful to the original but even then it would be dependent on the BluRay player's settings in some cases.

For composite editing, does DVCPRO yield better quality than AVCHD in FCE4?

Hi folks,
From what I understand, DVCPRO is much less compressed than AVCHD. If so, then, would it also be true that FCE4 would output a "cleaner" end product (i.e. for DVD, after undergoing significant composite editing/rendering) if I used DVCPRO rather than AVCHD? (It's my understanding that you should start with the highest quality... least compressed... raw footage as possible for composite editing).
Thanks, in advance, for your expertise!
Vic

Panasonic does not make a camera with the HFC-150 model designation. Do you mean the AG HMC-150?
If so, the camera records AVCHD (which is a VERY highly compressed format) and which will need to be translated into AIC to run in FCE. AIC was designed to deal with long GOP formats starting with mpeg 2 HDV. Its great value is it translates that difficult to edit frame structure into an all "I" frame format. However, it was not the most graceful format for color detail.
Having said that, while the HMC-150 is capable of very good images, most consumer video is so badly recorded (really poor lighting, wandering auto white balance, wandering auto focus, hand shake, etc) there is no way one can tell what the camera is capable of let alone if one codec is better than another for output.
If you already have FCE, see what the material looks like. You may find it perfectly adequate, even splendid in telling your stories.
If you want to see other options, I believe Premiere has a trial version and Apple has a trial of FCX. Do your own A/B/C comparision.
Have fun.
x

I can't afford an expensive microphone, but I want better quality than internal microphone to record voice. What's out there?

I can't afford an expensive microphone attachment, but I want higher quality to record my voice for eventual radio use. What's out there as far as inexpensive attachments that are easy to use? What can I do using my MacBook Pro?

Not sure what your idea of inexpensive is - have you searched for USB Microphones yet? There are hundreds of choices under $100 compatible with Mac or Pc. I'd be cautious and read reviews of the cheaper items as the built-in mic seems to be better than most $20-$30 ones.

Motion playback window MUCH better quality than final output?

I'm puzzled. I export a straight DV NTSC. The Motion playback window pops up when the job is done. It plays back the finished clip and it looks just grand, very clean. I open the clip itself in the Quicktime Player and it is quite ugly, full of artifacting and waffling.
Can someone explain to me the difference between the Motion playback window (the one that pops up when a job has been exported) and the Quicktime Player (such that one looks great and the other looks horrible)?
B.

Cher Mark,
****. Isn't life curious. And my brain even more curioser (to me). I've got credits on hundreds of films, I've produced at least twenty films myself in the last five years, I've edited half of them myself ... and I never ever knew there was that option on the Quicktime Player. Duh. Maybe it has something to do with working in SD again ... back in prehistoric times when everybody was working in SD there was always a good external monitor; and when we switched to HD the difference in QT Player quality was less noticeable, actually, I just looked, not noticeable on my laptop.
Thank you thank you, again, Mark ... the light goes on ... now I'm going to race off and find, I bet it exists, a draft\best mode for the FCP canvas window: We've been using the canvas window - dragged and resized on a second HD monitor to get a full frame 4:3 to cut this IMAX film. I'm trying to convince the boys to switch over to Apple (it's mainly a PC pipeline right now): so they have a modest tower (no frills), and are cutting in SD. They are being converted by degrees.
Very much appreciated...
Ben

Are external DVD burners better quality than an internal on a laptop?

I've always had this prejudice that stock Powerbook G4 internal DVD drives are poor quality and prone to breaking down. I lost mine after less than a year of service and it seems to me that folks are regularly complaining about stock internal burners going out.
I've had no working DVD drive for a couple of years on my old G4 and I'm getting a new one this week. I also have a Sony external dual layer DVD burner that is a real workhorse for me. It's what I've been using for all these years.
Now I'm wondering, when I have the new DVD burner installed next week, do I need to baby it and use the external whenever possible? Should I only use it whenever absolutely necessary and let the external do all the heavy lifting? Is this new internal drive going to fritz out on me after six months just like the last one did?
I've burned hundreds, maybe close to a thousand, DVDs on my external Sony and the machine is still good as gold. No sign of wear.
Is there any evidence to support this idea that internal laptop drives are delicate pieces of equipment waiting to break down and that external Sonys are solid and rugged? Or is that just my personal experience and is everyone else happy with their internal drives?
By the way, my new internal drive being shipped to me this week is an OWC (Other World Computing) drive made just for the older 400 mHz Powerbook G4 Titaniums. There's not a lot of choice in the market for a drive for such an old machine.

Software is the key to quality. Period, along with the quality of the original content, if it is good quality then you will get good quality, if it's poor quailty then you will get poor quality.
Use the best.
http://www.roxio.com/

Does Final Cut Studio deliver better quality than Final Cut Express

If my export target is Apple-TV 720p, is there any difference between the quality delivered in Final Cut Express versus the new Final Cut Studio? E.g. is it the same because Quicktime is doing it? I read something on the FCS home page that it "adapted the quality to the video content"? So would FSC somehow be better at utilizing the maximum 5Mbps data stream compared to FCE? Thanks.
-Troels

+is there any difference between the quality delivered in Final Cut Express versus the new Final Cut Studio?+
Not really, not per se, for this purpose. There are many factors at play, very important among them is the nature of your source media - if it is shot on a high quality camera and captured in ProRes or one of the other higher quality codecs supported by FCS then maybe you would see a difference. What are you using?

Why are the iPhone/Apple TV export presets better quality than QT h.264

I've been exporting a lot of content to the web lately and we use Compressor to batch encode most of it, but one thing has always puzzled/frustrated me! If you export using one of the Apple device presets, then the quality of output is pretty **** good, and these presets are all H.264 based. But if you export as a QT file with the H.264 codec, with all the same settings the quality is noticeably worse!
Does Apple have some special H.264 encoder hidden way for use in theIr presets?
Its really starting to frustrate us as we want to get that some quality but have a bit more flexibility with the data rate and resolutions.
Any ideas?

That's why I find this so puzzling. The extra blockiness is VERY apparent when watching the video played back. The main difference I see from the Media Info analysis is that F4V says "CABAC/3 ref frames" instead of just "2 ref frames". I suppose my main question is whether or not its possible to get the same quality in an mp4 file.

Photoshop Elements 11 Organizer: Full screen view of lower quality than with PSE 10 and before?!

Upgrading from PSE 10 to 11, I noticed that when I watch my images with the organizer in PSE 11 in full screen view mode (F11), while the images load faster, they are shown in a lower quality than in PSE 10 or any other version of PSE that I owned before. In PSE 11, after the initial viewing in full screen (in the "fit screen" mode), when I click with the mouse on an image to display the "100%" view, there is a delay and the program says "Loading...", after which the 100% view in the full screen mode appears. When I then click another time with the mouse on the image to get back to "fit screen" mode, I get an image of better quality than during the initial view!
So it seems like the program first gives a faster, but lower quality view of the image in full screen mode, and only after the user requests a 100% view, it actually loads the image with full detail, which is then preserved when going back to the "fit screen" view. This is a serious issue for me, because I also use PSE organizer to present my pictures to other people, and I don't want to show them some lower quality versions of my images, but the full quality ones, without having to first choose "100% view" and then go back to "fit screen".
How can I make the PSE 11 organizer give me a full-quality full screen image right away, as this used to be the case in PSE10 and before?
(I have both versions, PSE 11 and PSE 10, now on the same computer and tested this to confirm that the PSE 11 initial full screen view is of lower quality than the PSE 10 one. Also in PSE 10, there is practically no delay for displaying the "100%" view afterwards, indicating that the image was loaded with full detail right away.)

- Update:
* Adobe's senior support level has replied to me about this issue as follows:
"Thank you for contacting Adobe.
When you press the F11 button, Organizer 11 uses the Bicubic
interpolation mainly because it is less processor intensive compared to
Bicubic Sharper, and it helps to create the preview on the fly, rather
than based on the thumbnail cache.
When you zoom out from the 100% view, Elements Organizer uses Bicubic
Sharper. This is because Bicubic Sharper is used for image reduction, so
if the 100% view is larger than the available screen space, it will need
to shrink. The Bicubic Sharper images may look more crisp however, Like
any sharpening algorithm, Bicubic Sharper introduces halos and
edge-enhancement artifacts. Those halos are typically slight, but any
further sharpening (which you'll need when preparing an image for print,
for example) will exaggerate them.This is expected behavior. The
Organizer isn't great for determining exact quality, I recommend you to
use Elements Editor for this purpose.
Thank you,
Bobby Johnson,
Adobe Technical Support."
* My reply on this to Adobe is:
"Hello Bobby,
thank you for your reply. Now at least we are talking about the same thing.
Why I am wondering about the choice to use the "Bicubic" algorithm when pressing F11 in PSE 11 is that all previous versions of PSE that I owned (which spans from PSE 6 to PSE 10) did use the "Bicubic Sharper" algorithm right away when pressing F11. So apparently Adobe didn't worry about processor intensity of this algorithm then, and computers are getting all the time more powerful.
It is true that in some situations, the "Bicubic Sharper" algorithm may introduce halos and edge-enhancement artifacts, as you write. On the other hand, especially on smaller resolution screens, the results of the "Bicubic Sharper" algorithm may look more crisp and lively, while the ones of the "Bicubic" algorithm may look more flat and lack fine detail. This is not only my personal opinion, but as I have brought up this topic in several forums, I can see that I am not alone here.
So assuming that the question about preferring "Bicubic Sharper" or "Bicubic" as a default algorithm when pressing F11 is partly a matter of taste, and partly a matter of the hardware the user has available, why can Abobe not give the user an option to choose which one he/she would prefer? For instance, F11 gives full screen view with "Bicubic" applied, and CTRL+F11 with "Bicubic sharper"? Or make this an option in the preferences?
As I am using the PSE organizer also to present pictures to other people (and I know many people who use it that way too), I would like to show them my pictures as sharp and detail-rich as possible. Therefore, I would highly appreciate an option as described above to be implemented in the PSE 11 organizer via an update. It should be fairly easy from a programming point of view, since both algorithms are already contained in the program anyway."
* If you support this suggestion of mine as stated above, please also contact Adobe accordingly! The more support requests they get for this, the more likely it is that they will implement this update! You may mention my case number 0184046323 for reference.

Which is better quality for watching a pre downloaded movie airplay or HMDI?

I have the new Retnia. I have an apple tv and high quality HDMI cable. If I want watch a 900P movie from my laptop to my up to 1080p tv which would be more reliable/better quality? BTW the movie is predownloaded so it WOULD NOT be streamming.
Thanks!

My guess is the HDMI cable will yield better quality than AirPlay. Since you already have an HDMI cable and a Mac that supports AirPlay, why not try both for yourself then report back here with your results?

What gets better quality for watching video.. airplay mirroring or HDMI cable

I have the new Retnia. I have a apple tv and high quality HDMI cable. If I want watch a 900P movie from my laptop to my up to 1080p tv which would be more reliable/better quality? BTW the movie is predownloaded so it WOULD NOT be streamming.
Thanks!

My guess is the HDMI cable will yield better quality than AirPlay. Since you already have an HDMI cable and a Mac that supports AirPlay, why not try both for yourself then report back here with your results?

Better quality: .mov or .wmv?

I just recently got a job editing videos for my school and I'm using Final Cut Pro. Of course all the videos I've made for work are in .mov formats. But recently my boss asked me to convert the file to a .wmv format for him, for what reason I have no idea.
But never the less, he wants it in .wmv format. And after trying over and over again to convert the file into .wmv format without losing the quality (which I've found is extremely difficult), I started to wonder; is one format actually better quality than the other?
Is .mov better quality video than a .wmv? Or are both equally balanced video formats?

If you have to convert to wmv, then Flip4Mac Studio is gonna be the basic first step to that. Depending on the budget of your school, Episode is their upper grade encoder.
As for quality, I will suggest you contact the moderator at the F4M forum, HERE. He has a wealth of knowledge for this subject, since I think it's his business to encode daily for clients.

What is better than Skype when two iPad users want to live chat?

What is better than Skype when two iPad users want to live chat?

The built in app, FaceTime.

IChat 5.0.1 (SL) and Skype Video call?

Am new to this interweb calling but am excited by the prospect. If I am running iChat on my iMac - how do I set it up to call my friend in France who is using Skype on a PC? Thx

Of course your friend could get AIM for the PC or Trillian Pro which will Video chat with iChat.
I presumed that from the way you posted your friend was unlikely to do this.
I would seriously suggest you get Little Snitch
This has preset that allow Web Browsing and other regular apps.
It gives you Pop ups when any app calls you or calls out and tells you where and and on what internet ports it is using.
Like this iChat one
iChat in Video Invites calls the SNATMAP Server as in the pic.
After connection to your Buddy's IP on port 16402 the SNATMAP Server drops out leaving you Peer to Peer (You can log out of any AIM or Jabber Server you are in)
Skype does not do things this way as Little Snitch will show you.
Little Snitch comes as a trial for free and will give you enough for you to make a decision.
8:03 PM Thursday; November 19, 2009
Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

FCE helps making better quality videos than imovie?

I have been using iMovie HD and it looks like its corrupted and cannot re-install it since I lost the disk image.
I am thinking of going to FCE over upgrading to iLife 09.
Does FCE helps making better quality videos than imovie?

Eswar M wrote:
... Does FCE helps making better quality videos than imovie?
if your source is miniDV/Standard - yes.
if your source is 720p or iFrame - no.
in terms of speed and simplicity - iM09 is 'better'.
in terms of options and feature - FCE is by far superior.
note: iM09 is no 'upgrade' of your version, but a from ground off new app.
another note: FCE has a very steem learning curve, but after managing that is a fantastic tool!

Is IChat to Ichat better quality than Skype?

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