Noticable quality degradation on export

I am wanting to create "master files" from several timelines and reimport the resulting files into a new project for other editing purposes, such as for future DVD assets, and then purge the original project media and free up some storage space.
My sequence material was shot in DV and edited with sequence settings of DV/DVCPRO - NTSC. When I exported, I chose EXPORT/Quicktime Movie and chose Current Settings, Audio and Video, deselected Recompress All Frames, and selected Make Movie Self-Contained. After importing these files into a new project and displaying them on my NTSC monitor, there is what I would consider a fairly noticable loss of quality, a softening or slight blurring. I made sure the sequence settings in the new project matched those of the new files.
As are most of my problems, this is almost certainly operator error, and I'm sure been addressed here before. Any help would be appreciated.
-v

So, it sounds like since I have the finished piece effect-treated with the Nattress film-look filter, plus a color-grading pass, the entire thing is being recompressed. Do transitions plus effects on top of them get a double compression hit? Looking at the result I got from doing what the manual said, seems like a SDI Digibeta clone would hold up better than these files.
I noticed that I have not been rendering in "High-precision 10bit YUV". Would rendering in this setting make the resulting file cleaner? I'm sure this will be a longer render time....
I have definitely confirmed that the new project and sequence settings I'm importing into match the outputted files.
Another approach I thought about was to purge all the unused media and preserve just the needed media to maintain the sequences. Is there a (reliable) setting in the Media Manager that will do this?
I have always been a little scared of Media Manager since hearing a few horror stories. Maybe these bugs are fixed...I should point out I am still on FCP ver 5.1.4.
My preference is to create the master files but the quality needs to hold up and there just really seems to be, to my eye, an unacceptable lost of clarity when following the book's procedure.
Thanks again for the excellent responses...please forward any other thoughts?
-v

Similar Messages

FCP 5.1 Quality degradation on EXPORT!!

Hi all,
I'm using a Mac Pro 2.66Ghz w/ a 20" Cinema Display. I'm usually working with a Sony PD-170P & Panasonic NV-GS300. Either shooting 16:9 DVCAM or 16:9 DV footage.
When I capture inot FCP, I use the Standard PAL 48khz Anamorphic setting.
Question one can I capture my footage at say DVCPRO 50 PAL or something at a higher rate over standard firewire connection? To improve quality?
I've tried but during capture it seems to have an error.
Secondly and most importantly when I export using Quicktime or Quicktime conversion my final output is extremely bad quality. The picture seems washed out and when viewed an full resolution it seems very pixelated.
I've printed and previewed to tape and the quality is the same. It's only with exporting. I've read that compressor should be used? But I'm not to sure as to what settings.
I made the move from adobe premiere pro 2 to fcp for the obvious reasons. My last project was finished off in after effects 7 pro on a pc and exported as an uncompressed file. The quality of that mind you on my mac is brilliant.
How do I make the picutre and graphics in my fcp exports using standard 16:9 DV better. To be honest it was so much more easier in the primitive Premiere Pro 2.0.
Let me know ASAP,
Kindest Regards,
Joash

can I capture my footage at say DVCPRO 50 PAL or something at a higher rate over standard firewire connection? To improve quality?<<</div>
No. A Firewire transfer is merely a data transfer; 1s and 0s from one storage medium to another. Quality won't be any better than the original.
when I export using Quicktime or Quicktime conversion my final output is extremely bad quality<<</div>
I'd tried to answer your second question but cannot since you didn't state what your export settings were nor the codec chosen. Keep in mind that by default, QT file don't have their quality flag set. You can manually set the quality to high, or use a drop-n-drag program such as HiQual to do it for you. Also keep in mind that anytime you export to a lower format you're going to lose some quality due to compression.
-DH

Exported clip quality degraded

In order to improve the smoothness of the video motion I edit individual frames (eliminating repeat frames) ending up with a long string of short clips which I want to export as a single clip and import again.
My problem is that the imported combined clip quality is degraded compared to the original. I tried expert settings with *no compression*, but the clip was still of lower quality than the original.
The export size (720X480) and FR was set the same as original.
Any suggestions how to export without degrading?

Andrew, I read your post several time and have no idea what you are trying to do. This is iMovie HD6 forum, are you in the right forum ?
I have worked with iMovie 4 & 6 for several years, and have never had a need or a reason to do what you speak of. I use a tape based video camera. You should see no loss in image quality if you export back to tape. I have no experience with other formats, but I suspect that with formats other than tape, you would compress every time you save, resulting in some loss of resolution.
If you see "jitters" when you pan, I suspect that you would be using a camera with a digital stabilizer, in which case you should switch such stabilizer off when you pan.
jc

Quality degradation with the ColorSync Utility?

Is there any quality loss when one uses Apple's ColorSync Utility to match a new sRGB profile to an image previously colored with Adobe RGB? Since it's having to re-compress the image, is there a risk of significant quality degradation?
Here's why I'm asking: iPhoto is great with editing RAW photographs. But when it comes time for a JPEG export, I can only get it to export with Adobe RGB. So in order to get sRGB, I have to use the ColorSync Utility. Having to save a JPEG twice makes me slightly uncomfortable from a compression point of view.

Got it!
I removed the following files from my /Applications/Utilities/ColorSync Utility.app/Contents/Resources folder:
AnyTag.cstag
ChadTag.cstag
ColorSyncUtils.icns
CurvTag.cstag
DescTag.cstag
DtimTag.cstag
Header.cstag
MbaTag.cstag
MftTag.cstag
MlucTag.cstag
MmodTag.cstag
NdinTag.cstag
NumsTag.cstag
ParaTag.cstag
Preferences.csutil
TextTag.cstag
VcgtTag.cstag
XYZTag.cstag
bmp.icns
fpx.icns
pntg.icns
qtif.icns
sgi.icns
tga.icns
They all had last-modified dates sometime in 2004 and none of them were present in the ColorSync Utility.app package on the install CD, according to Pacifist (http://www.charlessoft.com/).

Is there quality degradation when going avi to VOB and back?

Hi,
Long time home editor with Pinnacle and now Adobe. But things I have always wanted to know:
Storage solutions
If I burn a DVD movie and want to bring that movie back into Premiere will the quality degrade in the new project?
Can I get more video onto a DVD as a DVD movie than storing the avi on DVD?
If so, I would be inclined to store video in DVD movie format as long as I can get the quality back when I grab the VOBs for other editing.
Thanks
Phil

Yes. If you start with a DV-AVI Type II file, you have a very lightly compressed file. When you go to DVD-Video, you have compressed to MPEG-2, but with SD material, played on a TV, you will still have an image, that is as good as it gets. Now, you bring that MPEG-2 into Premiere to re-edit, and the file will either be converted to DV-AVI Type II, by Premiere, or by a 3rd party program. It will be slightly degraded at that point. Where the hit really comes in is when you then Export that to DVD-Video via MPEG-2 compression yet again.
For my archiving, I keep the tapes, then Archive (I use Premiere Por's Project Manager, but PE has Archiver), to keep my Captured DV-AVI Type II's, plus the full Project. These go onto a series of 2TB external hard drives. If I anticipate needing to just burn additional DVD's later on, I'll burn to a folder, and keep that intact also. Otherwise, one can make a duplicate DVD from a "master," and not have to re-Transcode, or re-Compress.
Hunt

Serious vid degradation after exporting from '08 to 6

As I attempt my first iMovie project, I wanted to go from iMovie 08 to iMovieHD ---so I can place chapter markers--- before finishing up in iDVD. I exported from '08 as advised by David Pogue in THE MISSING MANUAL (SHARE > EXPORT USING QUICKTIME MOVIE using APPLE INTERMEDIATE CODEC), imported into 6, and... The picture quality suffered badly; there's this "pulsating" effect, wherein the video quality degrades and then clears up every couple of seconds.
Any insight into what is happening and/or what I'm doing wrong? THANKS!

I use both iMovie 06 and iMovie 08 (iMovie 06 about 90%, iMovie 08 about 10%).
iMovie 08 has two areas: events and projects. Events are just collections of clips. If you import DV video into iMovie 08, they end up as DV clips, at original quality in events. You can import these clips into iMovie 06 projects without quality loss by just starting a new project and importing the clip files from the iMovie 08 Events folder. This however makes a complete copy of the clip inside the iMovie '06 project file.
In the Finder, open the "Events" folder associated with your captured/imported files, Copy/Move them to another location, discard the "Event" from iMovie '08, close the application, Open iMovie 06 and import/Drag and Drop as you normally would.

Any ideas on keeping images on master pages consistently high quality display when exporting to pdf?

Any ideas on keeping images on master pages consistently high quality display when exporting to pdf?

Set up the Preflight panel so it checks image resolution. Ask your printer what the appropriate resolution is for your printing process, and set that in Preflight.

I make videos using my go pro hd camera, but when i export it only half of my 3 min video shows up with the audio playing in the background, plus when i try to select the quality in the export options it won't let me select 720p or 1080p?????? help!!!

i make videos using my go pro hd camera, but when i export it only half of my 3 min video shows up with the audio playing in the background, plus when i try to select the quality in the export options it won't let me select 720p or 1080p?????? help!!!

What you could do now is break up your video into smaller parts and render them out, then assemble them again as a whole.
I know this is not the best fix, but it might work.
You can duplicate an edit in the main screen, then delete the last bits and export,
do the same for the other half.
Then import the two bits (or more if you need) in a new edit.
Out of curiosity, can you post what format the video is in?
Copy a video straight from the camera to your computer.
Open it in Quicktime player, and with out playing type Apple + i
or Control + i for PCs
It should tell you lots of info about the video, and might help us to see what is wrong.
This is what it looks like:

Poor quality ProRes 422HQ exports compared to Final Cut 7 - suggestions?

At my workplace I'm looking at using Creative Cloud to replace Final Cut 7, but I'm having a really hard time producing broadcast quality ProRes 422HQ exports using Media Encoder. Detail levels are comparable but large areas of colour (e.g. a blue sky) show noticeable visual noise.
Looking closer you can see only 3 or 4 bands of colour with pixelated edges, whereas FCP deals with these gradients in a much more subtle way.
Source files are 1080p H264 movs from a Canon 5D and Final Cut exports (even from FCPX) just seem so much better.
More worryingly, I've even tried using AME's Animation codec or even Non-Compressed and the results are still quite a bit worse than a Final Cut 7 ProRes 422HQ export (we export from the timeline rather than using Compressor). Some tests I've done exporting to H264 at 12Mbps are also definitely inferior to Final Cut.
There aren't that many options to adjust - ticking Maximum Depth and Maximum Render Quality just adds lots of horizontal lines to the final file. Format is Quicktime, Renderer is set to Mercury Playback Engine Software Only.
Am I missing anything obvious or is Media Encoder just not as good? If so how is anyone using it in a broadcast workflow?
Below are some screenshots which I've made black and white and boosted the brightness so it's easier to see, but the pixelisation is noticeable on the normal exported movs and seems to be a definite step-down from FCP7.
This could well be a deal-breaker in terms of using Creative Cloud in the future - which would be very disappointing as the software itself seems great.
01 - H264 Raw - from Canon 5D:
02 - Final Cut ProRes 422HQ:
03 - Adobe Media Encoder ProRes 422HQ:
04 - Adobe Media Encoder ProRes 422HQ (Maximum Depth, Maximum Render Quality):
05 - Media Encoder Settings:
Sorry for the long post - any suggestions gratefully accepted!
Chris

Thanks for the response Kevin,
I fully updated as of last week - Premiere 8.1.0, Media Encoder 8.1.0.122 and ran the export again with a brand new Premiere project, dragged into a sequence, export media, selected Quicktime / ProRes 422HQ codec, matched the frame size, pressed queue to open Media Encoder and the started the export.
Exactly the same results I'm afraid - blocky, pixelated areas on gradients or areas of similar color.
Frustratingly, the free and 6 year old Mpeg Streamclip (v1.9.2) does a much better job, on a par with Final Cut. I don't suppose there's any way to automatically route the export via it?! Where Media Encoder uses 3 or 4 color shades with blocky finite edges, Streamclip and FCP seem to use 6 or 7 shades and the transitions between areas far smoother with visible dithering (you can see this in my original screenshots).
I would say that it seems to do with the source camera and how it's been originally encoded - I've done some further tests with Canon C300 rushes and they seem to convert / export well without problems and yet some blue skies in footage shot on a Sony F55 show some obvious banding (after conversion to ProRes 422HQ) that doesn't appear on the source.
I'm happy to provide the raw H264 mov to see if you are able to get any better results.
Chris

I get poor picture quality when I export my slides from keynote as jpeg and print them as a photo, any help?

I made a slide of multiple pics and objects, I am trying to export it to an 8x10 photo, the shop I am using only allows jpeg. The quality is so poor when I print it, is there a way to get better quality as I export it? I used keynote because I could set up a custom slide size (8x10) and then added the pics and other graphics in hope I could export as a jpeg and get a good quality photo? The photo images and slides are good quality it is the exporting where I am loosing clarity.
Ugh any help?

I made a slide of multiple pics and objects, I am trying to export it to an 8x10 photo, the shop I am using only allows jpeg. The quality is so poor when I print it, is there a way to get better quality as I export it? I used keynote because I could set up a custom slide size (8x10) and then added the pics and other graphics in hope I could export as a jpeg and get a good quality photo? The photo images and slides are good quality it is the exporting where I am loosing clarity.
Ugh any help?

I lose volume/quality when I export form garageband to itunes

I lose volume/quality when I export form garageband to itunes

It's been several months since I used Mac OSX Garageband but I used it a lot, I liked it very much *but* I too had this problem with losing volume/quality and it drove me to despair. A lot of my focus was devoted to trying to minimise loss of volume at every step. You'd think the magic of digital made this issue a thing of the past.
More recently I've been using iPad and so far, mainly because of the 'Merge' (bounce) facility this doesn't seem to be such a problem... Yet.
I believe however, you ought to have a look under preferences (I think there is preferences specific to GB and system preferences under Apple logo, you probably know that) there is an option that says something like Maximum Volume for exporting or something. This may seem counter intuitive but try unticking the box, if you haven't already. This should give you the option of increasing the volume but it may clip. That supposed max vol thing really means max vol without clipping... Sorry, this is long winded. Best of luck!

Why is my iPad sound quality degrade after I download ios7?

Why is my iPad sound quality degrade after I download ios7?

Try to reset the device:
*Device reset*
Device Reset (won't affect settings/data/music/apps/etc)
1. Press and hold (& continue to hold) BOTH the Sleep/Wake button & the Home button.
2. Continue to hold BOTH (ignoring any other messages that may show) until you see the Apple logo on the screen.
3. Release BOTH buttons when you see the Apple logo and allow the device to boot normally.

Quality of some images degrading on export

A customer of ours created a PDF from Indesign CS4 6.0.5 using our custom PDF export presets and noticed that the quality of some of her images degraded or became pixilated jagged however the resolution did not change. They checked the original images and they were fine. The images were layered .psd files, by the way.
I asked our customer for the original document and I was able to re-create the situation on our end. After much testing, I discovered that this only happens on PDF export. Postscripting and distilling the page gave much improved results. Replacing the images fresh on the page also fixed the problem. After speaking with others here, this is not the first time this has happened.
Has anyone else had this issue? Is there a setting somewhere that will fix it?
TIA
-Travis

It can definitely be seen on print. It is harder to see on screen. The quality of the image is not stellar to start with. We are a magazine printing company and our export setting are set up to not flatten the PDFs.
The problem acts like some sort of corruption in the picture box.
Thanks Bob

Noticeably worse quality for FCP exported DV video in QT Windows

Hey all,
I believe this question has been brought up in a previous post (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2932763&#2932763 "Quicktime export from FCP quality bad on PCs"), but it was never answered. So I captured video using final cut pro using the following capture preset:
Sequence Preset - DV NTSC 48 kHz
DVR-TRV900 using NTSC
29.97 fps
DV - NTSC at Best Quality
24 bits per pixel
720 by 480
When I view the video under quicktime for mac, it looks good. However, when I view the content under quicktime for windows, the quality is noticeably degraded. For instance, when I looked at the video clip in mac, there was a text overlay that displayed the time and date. When I look at it in Windows quicktime, the quality has degraded to an extent that the numbers are no longer readable. Besides the overall quality difference in playback between mac and pc quicktime, there are no other noticeable artifacts. Also, I tried viewing the video in VLC (video lan client) on windows, and it looks perfectly fine.
Ray

Hi Guys,
thanx for your replies.
here's the latest:
Brian, I followed your instructions and the DVD burned successfully. However the video quality of the dvd when viewed on my TV ('ve tried on all 3 of my tvs now) is still a lot poorer than the quicktime movie that was imported into DVDSP4. When I play the original QT Movie on my Mac CRT monitor it looks a little blurry and grainy because I guess its non interlaced however when viewed on an external Video monitor it looks great - very sharp.
When I view the burned DVD on my television the picture quality looks like the non interlaced version of the original QT Movie that appeared on my Mac CRT and not the sharp interlaced (lower field) version that appeared on my external video monitor.
Its almost like taking a sharp jpeg into Photoshop and applying a gaussian blur of about 0.3 followed by jepg compression compressing it down to 5% quality!
I'm totally mystified. Can the conversion to Mpeg2 be removing all interlacing so that you get the less sharp computer monitor look? I just want the video on my final DVDs to be as good as the original source footage! I appreciate that along the way there might be loss of some quality but surely not that much?
Does this make sense to you guys or am I still doing something very wrong?
Robert: I have tried setting all manner of drives including a fresh external firewire HD with nothing on it (clean out of the box) but it doesn't seem to help.
Brian: I tried the no network suggestion a few months back but I'm not sure if I got it right. At the moment I have broadband through an external speedtouch usb modem and am also connected (occasionally although not for the last 3 months) via a crossover cable to my PCs ethernet card. When I last tried the No Network solution I had immense trouble getting my internet to work again! Can you please help me by directing me to the best ay to do this while protecting my internet settings?
any more help guys would be greatfully appreciated.

A mystery of PDF quality degradation in indd

Ok, so this is a strange phenomenon that has occured. I have created an InDesign portfolio, which includes pdfs, jpegs, tiffs, and photoshop files. I made the document for print, exported to pdf, and have some beautiful pdfs that I have used. These files are very large, which will not work for sending emailed versions, so I went back into the Indd file and exported at a smaller setting. I noticed that the images in the new exported pdf were still good quality, but all the files that were placed pdfs looked smeared, aka garbage. After fiddling with the settings, I deduced that the placed files themselves in the indd doc were of degraded quality. (*note not the original files used to placed that are in a folder on my comp). When I attempted to change the view settings to high quality, nothing changed. The files seemed to be stuck in a blurry mode. I went through and re-placed all the pdf files, which seemed to fix the problem. I am not sure how this could have happened, since all the other placed files were still of good quality. Only the pdfs turned "bad" and this happened after about a month. A month ago, the same exact indd files, without any changes, could be changed to high quality viewing and they exported correctly. How could these "bad" pdfs export well, and then a month later not export well and need to be replaced into the indd doc? This really baffles my mind, and I wonder if anyone else has experienced this or has any clue as to what is going on. I am using indd CS 5.5 on a MacBook Pro 2011 with Lion.
Thanks!

Unfortunately there is not much to go on here. Could be the links were modified or missing -- could you have moved the originals?-- or it might corruption in either your prefs, see Replace Your Preferences or in the file itself, see Remove minor corruption by exporting

Noticable quality degradation on export

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for