Pixelation on playback

I cut together a short intro scene that was fairly complicated--6 video tracks overlapping at various points. The idea is to have a small picture of each person I need to show move into a spot on a larger background, a total of eight will be shown but no more than two at once. Problem is, the video comes out very poor. The titles and background look sharp but the video clips of the people talking are very grainy (and not just aliasing). For both text and video I used the motion controls in FCP (not the Motion program) so I don't see why there should be a difference. I think the problem is in the render because when I look at unrendered footage it's very clear, as it is when I watch it from the clips I imported into the bin. When I print to video and watch on an NTSC monitor, the problem arises.
Am I on the right track thinking it has to do with rendering or does shrinking the video clips necessarily compromise quality for some reason? Will the Quick Time Pro fix I've seen on this forum help and, if so, doesn't QTP come bundled with FCP (it's not on my computer...)? Could it be a hard drive space issue? Any help at all would be awesome. Thanks.
PS - All the import/sequence/etc settings are correct.

Had you not already done a print to video and looked at it through an NTSC monitor I would have suggested Shane's Stock answer #2.
I've included it at the bottom just in case you didn't actually render eveything or disable overlays and they are the culprits.
At this point I would suggest a couple things.
First try Exporting your movie as a QuickTime movie (NOT Quicktime conversion) and make it a self contained movie. This will bring all your video tracks down to one and we can trouble shoot that as a problem. Then open a new FCP project import the QT Movie you exported , drop it into the timeline and then print to video. See if it makes a difference.
If that doesn't work then my next suggestion may then be to trash preferences, repair permissions and re-boot your computer. And I only offer this becuase I have to run out to a client right now and won't be back to check your result until later tonight.
Hopefully someone else might assist you in the meanwhile.
Here's Shane's Stock Answer I referred to earlier:
Shane's Stock Answer #2: Blurry playback
ONLY JUDGE THE QUALITY OF YOUR MATERIAL ON AN EXTERNAL NTSC MONITOR, OR AT LEAST A TV.
1. Disable overlays on the canvas
2. Make sure you've rendered everything (no green bars at the top of the timeline
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=24787
Video playback requires large amounts of data and many computations. In order to maintain frame rate and be viewable at a normal size, only about one-fourth of the DV data is used in displaying the movie to the screen. However, the DV footage is still at full quality, and is best viewed thru a TV or NTSC monitor routed thru your camera or deck.

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H264 footage is pixelating on playback

Hi
Im trying to edit some .mov H264 footage in premioere CS5 but playback in Premiere is always very pixelated. I had to convert the footage using mpeg stream so the footage would work with my pc but playback in Quicktime is fine. Also when I export the footage playback is fine. I cant edit the footage because I can hardly makeout whats going on. If I click propertys in Premiere on the clips im having problems with I get
File Path: T:\viddy\New folder\493_0560_01.mov
Type: MPEG Movie
File Size: 54.5 MB
Image Size: 1280 x 720
Pixel Depth: 32
Frame Rate: 25.00
Source Audio Format: 48000 Hz - compressed - Stereo
Project Audio Format: 48000 Hz - 32 bit floating point - Stereo
Total Duration: 00:00:17:19
Average Data Rate: 3.1 MB / second
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.0
in movie inspector I get this
As you can see Premiere thinks itss MPEG. Could this be the problem? How do I fix this?
This is what the bad footage looks like
I have Windows 7, Premiere CS5 5.0.2, Geforce 8400GS, Quicktime 7.6.8, 6 gig RAM, Quad AMD.
Thanks for any help

Right click on your monitor window and verify playback resolution is set to full.

Why do my photos look pixellated during playback on a TV?

Still using iLife '08 but have noticed recently that photos I use in slideshows (whether imported from iPhoto or Aperture) look as if they are slightly out of focus (or pixellated) when played back on a plasma/LCD television screen.
After building a slideshow on iDVD and then playing it on my cinema display the images look razor sharp but this is not the case after the DVD has been burned and is being played back on a domestic DVD player and a television screen.
I'm pretty sure this is to do with the difference in resolution between the cinema display and the television screen but I am wondering if there is/are a setting (or settings) in either iPhoto, iDVD or Aperture that I should be using to improve the quality of the images when they are displayed on the television screen.
I'd be grateful for any comments, ideas or suggestions.
Kind regards,
Cliff
Brighton, UK

I've noticed a very similar thing, again with iLife '08. I've created movies in iMovie and exported them as Quicktime files and to the Media Browser. They appear fine when playing them in Quicktime but appear pixellated when playing them in iDvD preview mode, this happens for both large and medium formats.
Look forward to hearing if anyone knows anything about it.

All video content pixelated during playback.

Issue: All video content (Trailers, Podcasts, TV shows stored locally, TV shows & music videos streamed from iTunes) are pixelated. HDMI Audio is unaffected as are the AppleTV menus, screen savers and photo slideshows.
*Troubleshooting steps taken:*
Checked HDMI cable connection.
Checked HDMI cable with another device.
Checked various types of video content.
Ran diagnostics on AppleTV. No errors found.
Restored AppleTV to factory conditions.
Upgraded to latest firmware.
Synced content locally.
I have no idea what else to do. Has anyone ran into this situation? What, if anything, could I do to resolve this issue?
I have used my AppleTV without this issue ever happening before as recently as a week ago. The content that I was attempted to watch was purchased from the Apple iTunes store.

Since another device worked with the same cable and port on my Vizio TV I have, the only thing could have been the AppleTV. So I decided to go to the Apple Store. 45 minutes after unplugging the AppleTV I was at the Apple Store. Then after another 40 minutes of waiting for the Genuis, my AppleTV was plugged in and worked perfectly.
The only thing I can think of is the heat from the AppleTV always being on affected the graphics card. Let's see if it happens again.

Stuttery, Pixellated visual playback

I have posted this problem before and no one seemed to know how to fix it. I thought i would wait for an itunes/Quicktime update but that did not solve the problem so I am posting again.
When i try to watch a video file through quicktime or a video podcast via itunes the Visual part of the playback stutters, pauseing for seconds before showing the next image which may or may not run normally for a second or so before doing the same. Often the transition from one image to the next causes the image to pixellate. The sound however is perfect throughout.
What is confusing though is that i can watch video files on websites such as gametrailers.com that use quicktime and they play perfectly.
Having looked at the Show Movie Inspector panel in Quicktime, the counter reading does not run sequentially, it seems to run as if being in fast forward skipped 20-40 seconds at a time.
I have tried everything i can think of and that has been suggested to me and the problem still persists.
My drivers are up to date, Quicktime is up to date, Quicktime Alternative suffers the same problem, I have tried uninstall/reinstall.
I have an NVIDIA GeForce 7900, running Windows Vista.
Message was edited by: Ednory
Message was edited by: Ednory

I have found something of interest, http://www.geekzone.co.nz/hadders/2273 is a forum thread of someone having a similar problem that he linked to Intel RAID array. I have no idea what that is, i have an AMD Athlon and a single unpartitioned internal HDD and an external one.
But the second post made a suggestion of running the file from an external HDD, which i did and which solved the problem to an extent.
It is now a task of finding out what is causing .mov files played from my internal HDD to play in this manner. It used to play them perfectly fine untill a number of months ago.

Pixelated video playbacks

Pls hlp

Based on your description, it sounds like a driver bug. I tried it on several configs (Firefox, Mac, Safari, Chrome on MacOS, Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer on Win7 x64). My guess is that there's an encoding error in that stream, and the hardware decoding is less tolerant that our software video stack, which is much more complex and resilient in the face of things like network and encoding errors. The hardware is very fast, but often times less forgiving.
I would continue to keep an eye out for updated drivers from Intel. The stuff available for Win7 has had a much, much longer time to mature. The quality of Win8 drivers will also improve over time, but it's a less mature ecosystem. Writing graphics drivers is an extremely difficult undertaking, and it takes a lot of time for the long-tail of odd little edge-cases to get worked out.

AS2 noScale and pixelation issue

We are doing a number of banners for a client in AS2 using Flash 8 Pro. The version was their specification.
Now I've generated a series of PNGs in photoshop at precisely the same dimensions an imported them directly into the Flash Library.The problem is, when we epublish this to HTML it scales up about 120% and pixelates badly. I've already explored a few workarounds to varying success. Allow me to explain:
In the swf preview (Ctrl+Enter) I get no scale or pixelation issues. The render is clean and sized correctly. The scale problem is only happening in the HTML publishing.
-I double checked the code on the HTML and the size specifications are the same as those in my FLA and PSD. Identical.
-In the publishing settings I discovered that the noScale option prevented the issue, but only for the machine I was working on. None the other test machines saw any improvement in the published banner(we have 4).
-I tried embedding a noScale Actionscript directly into the FLA. Same issues as above. Only the work PC displayed the correct size, the other machines did not.
-I tried manually setting the HTML publish size specifications. Again, same problem.
What's strange to me is that the noScale only corrects the problem for the machine the project was done on. Makes me think some caching is to blame for the misrepresentation. And the HTML Publish seems to be ignoring my size specifications for the SWF altogether. Can someone tell me why this is happening?

Well it looks like I may have resolved this issue, sort of. John (owner of the tapes) let me borrow his camera for the experiment (Thanks). This is what I did with the theory that if I captured using a sony dcr-vx2000 pixelation would be reduced.
The other night (late), I pulled some hurricane Katrina footage that I had not captured yet and capture it with the canon xl2. on playback of the capture NO PIXELATION was observed at all(I watched it three times). I took the originalvtapes that I worked with last week on the wedding and recaptured on the caon xl2. Resulted in occasional pixelation. I then took the same tape and re captured it from the sony camera. Resulted in NO pixelation when playback observed on a tv and on pc screen.
Conclusion:
even though ths is not scientifically provef true or fals, I observed that to capture from a mini dv tape if shot on sony camera, you need to use a sony camera for capture. Same thingapplies with canon.
Note: Canon and Sony, please address these issues as a professional courtesy to the rest of your customers. Thank you.

Pixelation issue continues......

Hi all. I just did a edit on a wedding and there was a lot of pixelation durring the edit and on the print to tape. I did use a tv for preview and pixelation was visible. Now just to fill in some additional details. I captured it usig my Canon XL2. The shoot was done by some one else using a Sony 3ccd camera of some type. The tape is a panasonic mini dv tape (AY-DVM63PQ). Is it possible I may be having a tape,player caturing stew that is the cause of the pixelation? If additional nfo is needed please let me kow. Thanks all.
Raymond

Well it looks like I may have resolved this issue, sort of. John (owner of the tapes) let me borrow his camera for the experiment (Thanks). This is what I did with the theory that if I captured using a sony dcr-vx2000 pixelation would be reduced.
The other night (late), I pulled some hurricane Katrina footage that I had not captured yet and capture it with the canon xl2. on playback of the capture NO PIXELATION was observed at all(I watched it three times). I took the originalvtapes that I worked with last week on the wedding and recaptured on the caon xl2. Resulted in occasional pixelation. I then took the same tape and re captured it from the sony camera. Resulted in NO pixelation when playback observed on a tv and on pc screen.
Conclusion:
even though ths is not scientifically provef true or fals, I observed that to capture from a mini dv tape if shot on sony camera, you need to use a sony camera for capture. Same thingapplies with canon.
Note: Canon and Sony, please address these issues as a professional courtesy to the rest of your customers. Thank you.

IDVD 6.02 track initialization problems and no disk image

"There was an error during track initialization and iDVD can't continue burning this DVD (the disc has not been touched yet!). Select 'Delete Encoded Assets' from the Advanced-menu and try burning this project again."
This has happened 5 times now both when trying to burn to DVD-R and trying to save as disk image on desktop. Very frustrating.
Project exported to IDVD from Keynote 3.01 running OSX 10.4.7 on a Powermac G5 D2.3 GHz with 2.5GB RAM.
The project is just 1GB using iDVD 4 theme "Transparent Blue" with a run time of 15:14 mins and HD has over 20GB free.
Also tried it from the other internal HD which has over 100GB free.
PBG4 Ti DVI and PMac G5 D2.3Ghz Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Both TV (using a Sony DVD player) and on my Lacie
Photon 20 monitor - the slideshow jpegs and Keynote
fonts look poor compared to the straight QT movies
that are part of the project and made using iMovie.
Your QT movies are probably much higher resolution than your DVD.
JEPGS are pretty hi res.
Ultimately, all the resolution you can get on an NTSC DVD is 640x480 pixels in the square pixel terms of digital cameras. The HD discs we can create today have the same 'limited' resolution - they just stretch the pixels on playback.
Someday ... when we can all afford systems with TRUE HD format burners and players, things will get better.

How to play videos in normal quality in youtube as it is always buffered in hq and there is no option to change quality??

how to play videos in normal quality in youtube as it is always buffered in hq and there is no option to change quality?? problem because i hav network speed upto 512kbps and hq videos are nt buffered properly in it..

macalltheway wrote:
What a bummer.
Now I'm stuck with a just-about useless camera. I really need something as small as the FH1 (it's TINY).
Hard-drive camcorders record MPG2, which I assume makes them just as useless.
Is then MiniDV the only choice for a sub-$500 1080i/p camera that will allow me to edit footage without converting?
If so, any tips on the smallest one out there?
Google came up with Sony's DCR-PC55, but it's four years old and only does SD...
Do you want good OR do you want cheap? That is the decision you need to make. Also, tiny tends to be the opposite of good.
P.S. AIC converted it best; ProRes(Lo/HQ) left it pixelated for playback. But it takes about an hour a minute, and increases the file-size tenfold, so it's no good anyway.
Yes, your actual editable video file is going to be 10x bigger than a MPEG-4 file. That is what you want.
P.S. 2 "....FCP is converting your video behind the scenes which is causing all your problems."
If that's the case, then my oldish MacBook Pro (2GHz Duo, 2GB RAM) has enough juice to play the 640x480 MPG4 clips smoothly, but not the HD ones. Could the latest MacBook (2.5/6/8GHz, 8GB RAM) could play the 1080p30 clips smoothly?
No, you still have the same problem. MPEG-4 files are non-editable. You really need to convert to an editable format and then bring that into FCP. MPEG Streamclip is going to be your best choice.

Idvd performs better than dvdsp

I have tried authoring a 75 min project using compressor and dvdsp and I get this strange pulsing pixelation in certain shots. I author the same project in idvd, I don't get any pulsing, but in the last 10 minutes of the project, I get pixelation on playback.
I have a deadline tomorrow and I'm ready to throw my new macbookpro out the window. I have made numerous tests, using default settings and custom settings, used various disk brands, and still I can't seem to manage the simple task of authoring a 75 min dvd.
Any suggestions? Has anyone else experienced this pulsing?

Hi
Those pulsing shots were made under certain different light condition? Some kind of ambience lighting can make and "pulsating color" effect.
Besides that, what format is your source and what encoding setting did you use in Compressor?
Alberto

IDVD - PAL - NTSC - REGIONS; All messed up?

So I finished a project on iDVD, and the "clients" are from many different countries... The original project was worked as PAL. In the end, in iDVD I changed the setting to NTSC in order to write 3 disks. 1 for a client in Canada, and 2 for the U.S.
With the Canadian, there were no issues (at least the client didn't mention anything, only that the DVDs were great).
The one American, told me she had to change regions to her laptop DVD in order to watch it, but other than that it was ok.
The other American, could not watch the DVDs on her old windows xp laptop, also not on her DVD player on her Tv. She also went to a store to ask for help and the technician told her he could see the contents of the disk, but not play them; probably because they were not NTSC (!!!!). Finally she watched the DVDs by using VLC on her laptop (no region change here...)
What is going on? The same disks, 3 totally different behaviours...
Can anyone guess what went wrong?
I would really like to fix those problems...
Thank you!

Hi
Region - Should not be any problem - as iDVD only can make Region = Zero (0)
This means - Plays in any economical region (Has Nothing to do With TV-Standard at all)
TV-standard are as:
• NTSC (29.97fps) 520 lines - about 640x480 pixels (square) 720x480 rectangular (narrow) pixels
• PAL (25 fps) 625 lines - about 768x576 pixels (square) 720x576 rectangular (narrow) pixels
And Playback on Computer - should be able to use both - VLC usually works better than QuickTime in these cases. BUT here I noticed that PC/Macs are picky on Quality
• Burn speed I set down to x2 (or x4)
• I only use Verbatim DVDs - NO Memorex or NoName or other cheap brands - Yes it matters
• I use DVD-R as they play on more and even older DVD-players
My notes on this subject.
PAL to NTSC or NTSC to PAL
A. Copying commercial DVDs - No Not possibly at all - Not even legal to discuss.
B. Home made DVDs (DVDs without copy protection)
C. Movies from iMovie or FinalCut
• Save as full quality QuickTime .mov and convert this with JES_Deinterlacer (free on internet)
NTSC ---> PAL.
• Most often not necessary - Most stand alone PAL DVD-players playback NTSC
(if TV is old in BL/W)
PAL ---> NTSC.
• If played on Mac - not necessary AT ALL
• If on NTSC DVD-player - CONVERSION IS NEEDED - nearly no Stand alone NTSC-DVD-players
playback PAL at all.
To do this You need to convert the PAL DVD to streaming.DV or full quality QuickTime .mov
• I use Roxio Toast™ to do this (There are no free converter)
• JES_Deinterlacer (free on internet) to convert to NTSC
• Set up an NTSC project (29.97fps or 30) in iDVD and import then burn
I burn to
• Verbatim DVD-R
• Set down burn speed in iDVD to x1 or x4 recommended by many
• Secure a minimum of 25Gb free space on internal boot hard disk before burning (IMPORTANT)
PAL is 25 fps and an analog TV standard of 625 lines
NTSC is 29.97 fps and 520 lines
NTSC (29.97fps) 520 lines - about 640x480 pixels (square) 720x480 rectangular (narrow) pixels
PAL (25 fps) 625 lines - about 768x576 pixels (square) 720x576 rectangular (narrow) pixels
to use a photo 702x480 resp 576 then add 9 pixels on each side to add together as 720
If iDVD hangs on PAL or NTSC.
Bengt W wrote
Deleting iDVD pref. file - should return You into NTSC mode.
Yes iDVD can switch to PAL - BUT as You see with a rather lousy result.
a. Need to convert to PAL - most often not - Most PAL-player can playback NTSC
and on a fairly new TV in color. (old TV in Bl/W)
(Other way around - from PAL to NTSC most often a must - few NTSC-player can use PAL)
b. IF MUST - then use JES_Deinterlacer to do this conversion - so much better and free.
My list on this (or rather PAL --> NTSC - just think the other way around)
I have to send it overseas
That too can be a problem. As USA = NTSC = 29.97fps and EU = PAL = 25fps.
DO Not let iMovie or iDVD do this conversion from one to the other - Result will be Very
BAD
I save the movie as a full quality QuickTime .mov file then I use JES_Deinterlacer to do the conversion - then I cont. in iMovie or iDVD with project set accordingly.
JES_Deinterlacer is free on Internet and there are Pro applications but not that much better and costs are astronomical.
PAL-DVDs - don't play in US
NTSC-DVDs - usually plays well in EU
All plays well on a Mac - What ever.
Allosaurus writes
Thank you SDMacuser. I dumped all the plist icons with no result, and was getting pretty plist off when it occurred to me to delete all the previous dvd.proj files. Bingo. That did the trick. So thank you for all your help and the additional information you provided.
Yours Bengt W

How to play HD in low quality

Hello.
I have Sanyo’s latest Xacti gizmo VPC-FH1, which shoots “Full” HD at 1920x1080. The MP4 clips are obviously huge, at some 3MB per second. I can play the clips fairly well with QuickTime, but it’s a different story in Final Cut 6.
Whether in viewer or in canvass (with audio tracks deleted for good measure) it plays for two seconds and then freezes and just skips to a frame a few seconds ahead every few seconds. Downsizing even down to 12% makes no difference, and even if it did, it’d be way to small to be any good for editing.
I remember having similar issues with 1080p back with the HVX200, but I think I managed to downgrade the playback/render quality to a point where it played smoothly.
I’ve messed with different settings now, to no avail.
There’s user preferences, systems settings, timeline setting, RT, etc, etc...
What can I do for the clips to play smoothly?
I have a 2Ghz Core Duo 15” MBP with 2GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM.
For future reference, is there a MacBook that could play these clips smoothly without sacrificing quality?
Thank you much,
MaW

macalltheway wrote:
What a bummer.
Now I'm stuck with a just-about useless camera. I really need something as small as the FH1 (it's TINY).
Hard-drive camcorders record MPG2, which I assume makes them just as useless.
Is then MiniDV the only choice for a sub-$500 1080i/p camera that will allow me to edit footage without converting?
If so, any tips on the smallest one out there?
Google came up with Sony's DCR-PC55, but it's four years old and only does SD...
Do you want good OR do you want cheap? That is the decision you need to make. Also, tiny tends to be the opposite of good.
P.S. AIC converted it best; ProRes(Lo/HQ) left it pixelated for playback. But it takes about an hour a minute, and increases the file-size tenfold, so it's no good anyway.
Yes, your actual editable video file is going to be 10x bigger than a MPEG-4 file. That is what you want.
P.S. 2 "....FCP is converting your video behind the scenes which is causing all your problems."
If that's the case, then my oldish MacBook Pro (2GHz Duo, 2GB RAM) has enough juice to play the 640x480 MPG4 clips smoothly, but not the HD ones. Could the latest MacBook (2.5/6/8GHz, 8GB RAM) could play the 1080p30 clips smoothly?
No, you still have the same problem. MPEG-4 files are non-editable. You really need to convert to an editable format and then bring that into FCP. MPEG Streamclip is going to be your best choice.

Video conversion for N8

I've been trying to convert movies for my N8. So far, I couldn't get the right conversion factors such as the resolution, bitrate, frame rate, video codec, etc.
The videos I convert work on my N8 but the size always exceeds 1GB, and the video isn't in full screen.
Does anyone here knows the best video conversion setting for the N8?
Thanks in advance.
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Hey again 00RaiserTwo!
Here are the specifications regarding the Video for the N8, I hope this was what you where looking for.
Display:
360x640 pixels
Video Playback Performance:
encoding 25fps
decoding 30fps
File Formats:
H.264
MPEG-4, VC-1
H.263
Real Video 10
ON2 VP6
Flash video
Press the 'Accept As Solution' icon if I have solved your problem, Kudos my post if my advice has helped you!

New Cinema Display

got a new display a couple of weeks ago and it keeps making intermittent clicking/crackling sounds... anyone else having this problem?

Just guessing...
I'll bet the glossy display only options we see from the new MBP's and the new 24" foretell the future pretty much, and it's because they are greener than what can be done with a matte screen. Making Apple product environmentally friendly is a big push at the company. That is the reason Apple is turning to them I'll wager. We should to support them in this effort I think.
That said, a 23" full screen pixel for pixel HD playback with an MXO makes real sense for a lot of us.
I have a 23" in my own system, and have used many of the 20" displays. There is definitely an improvement in work flow because of the extra pixels, full screen playback notwithstanding. My favorite setup is 2 23" displays. I've never worked with the other displays mentioned here, but because of who posts about them, I'll bet they are very nice indeed. However a glossy display is every bit as nice or better as a matte as long as you can control the light. In most fixed situations, it is controllable I'd think.
Jerry

Pixelation on playback

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