"Quicktime Conversion" quality drop

Weird problem. When I "export as QT movie" the video in the Canvas retains it's quality and sharpness. However, when I "export as QT conversion" the quality takes a hit as soon as the export window opens up.
Why should this matter? I need to export my videos as .wmv files (using flip4mac) and the actual conversion looks exactly like the lower quality view I see in the Canvas.
O.K. This USED to work (I have an older file that looks very sharp). I don't believe it's a flip4mac thing, as the quality drop hits at the QT Conversion window and my export plug-in isn't even accessed yet.
To clarify, is there a setting in FCP that I've messed with to cause this?
Any help would be appreciated.
And, yes, I'm posting this over at the QT forum as well.

Instead of using Quicktime conversion. Use Quicktime Movie...Current Settings....Don't Recompress All frame. Don't Make Self-Contained. This will make a small reference. Open that in Quicktime and do your compression. Make sure your timeline in FCP is render.
Try that......
(Question....when you use Quicktime conversion. Is you timeline render?)

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Quality drop of film in idvd disc image or DVD

I’ve made some films in FCE HD exported them to QT and used a idvd (6.0.3) theme to write a dvd, all I I should and have done many many times before.
All the films exported to QT are in good quality when you watch them in QT, even if you play them in IDVD they look perfect, but once the dvd is written, or even written to disc image (so it can’t be a bad dvd) there is a huge quality drop. It does not look like a high quality apple made film anymore, compare it to an old analog filmed thing with huge bad pixels blocky view, like I used a crystallize effect in imovie (but the film has never been in imovie), not smooth at all as it is playing in QT or did in FCE
It even shows bad on my tv, so not only on my 15,4 macbook or 20” cinema display
This is very humiliating when you play it to a crowd of friends
Is this a idvd 6 problem, might switching to DVD studio Pro be a solution?
I have had this problem ever since I used IDVD6, could returning to IDVD5 be a good cure?
This can not be a good direction of working…
RC
MB Pro 1,83 GHz 1,5GB Ram 120HD Mac OS X (10.4.7) 20" Cin-displ; Lacie 120-500-600 Extern HD

A few points:
First of all, how long is your movie? The closer it is to Best Quality's 2 hour limitation the more artifacting may occur. I find that if I keep things under 90 minutes I get much cleaner results. If it is over 90 minutes I split it over two projects (this all assumes you are using Single Layer DVD/burner. DL will, of course, handle longer movies differently)
The suggestion to make sure everything is PAL is totally correct. Make sure all your FCE sequences are PAL as well as iDVD
Just to clarify: From FCE Export as Quictime Movie ... not Quicktime Conversion. You can decide to make it self-contained or not but this will not affect the quality.
Compressing to MPEG2 is certainly an "invasive" process. DVD Studio Pro and Compressor gives you more options, but for most of my movies I use iDVD and get clean results ... except, as I said, if the running time is very long.
The other thing to note here: What is your source material? Are we talking DV original? Or were the original video files another codec, like MPEG4, or MPEG2 from a DVD ... if so, you already went thru re-compression in order to work in FCE ... by the time you make a DVD, yikes. If it is all DV original, you are really only encoding once.
And viewing your work on a TV applies to every step of the process, including in FCE. While working there, use a TV to monitor your work and you will have an accurate idea to what your image quality actually is

Quicktime movie or Quicktime conversion?

I shoot a wedding, everything is edited using final cut pro 7, I want avoid using compressor, Should I use Qucik time movie or should I use Quicktime conversion,,, I want to burn on a DVD, video was shoot at 1080p 3ofps... Please help

Sorry, if you want to make a DVD, Compressor is your best bet. I mean, you CAN skip it, and take the export directly into DVD Studio Pro to author the DVD...but Compressor will do a much better job.
Anyway...here's a down and dirty way to author a DVD:
#42 - Quick and dirty way to author a DVD
Shane's Stock Answer #42 - David Roth Weiss' Secret Quick and Dirty Way to Author a DVD:
The absolute simplest way to make a DVD using FCP and DVDSP is as follows:
1. Export a QT movie, either a reference file or self contained using current settings.
2. Open DVDSP, select the "graphical" tab and you will see two little monitors, one blue, one green.
3. Select the left blue one and hit delete.
4. Now, select the green one, right click on it amd select the top option "first play".
5. Now drag your QT from the broswer and drop it on top of the green monitor.
6. Now, for a DVD from an HD source, look to the right side and select the "general tab" in the track editor, and see the Display Mode, and select "16:9 pan-scan."
7. Hit the little black and yellow burn icon at the top of the page and put a a DVD in when prompted. DVDSP will encode and burn your new DVD.
THATS ALL!!!
NOW...if you want a GOOD LOOKING DVD, instead of taking your REF movie into DVD SP, instead take it into Compressor and choose the BEST QUALITY ENCODE (2 pass VBR) that matches your show timing. Then take THAT result into DVD SP and follow the rest of the steps. Except you can choose "16:9 LETTERBOX" instead of PAN & SCAN if you want to see the entire image.

Quicktime conversion in FCE 4

Hi, am uploading 5 mins of film to a website, so from FCE 4 use quicktime conversion to compress and prepare. 2 queries if anyone has advice. I understand that Sorenson video 3 is a good codec to compress, and thought it was a standard option. It doesn't appear in the drop down list. Should it? And if not, is it the best anyway? Secondly I have prepared this file using MPEG-4 codec, medium quality slider, size 480 by 360, key fps 25, key frame rate 250, audio on mono - first time it looked good. Then I decided to tinker with the settings and have NEVER been able to achieve the same quality, even by going back to the original settings. It's unfocused, choppy (like there a key frame problem or quality slider needs moving), and the file is half the size. Can't work out what has changed, or whether it's the machine. Any ideas?

Try exporting to a H.264 .mov file.

Exporting a 4 minute clip using H.264 Quicktime Conversion but it's 2.5Gb?

I have edited a 4 minute video using source footage at 1440x1080 50i. When I export using Quicktime Conversion and H.264 compressor it's taking forever and is coming out at a whopping 2.5Gb. I am sure I have used H.264 and Quicktime Conversion before and a file of this length and size should be about 15Mb. Also I remember it taking far less time.
Anyone got any ideas? I am exporting at the same size and using Best Quality.
Thanks in advance.

Hi, welcome to FCP forum,
Bit rate and frame size affect the file size, also best if you export sound as AAC not PCM.
If you are aiming at creating a movie for the web then yes, the final result should be well under 80MB.
Reduce frame size (customize it i.e. 480x270 etc.), keep bit rate at around 1,000kbts not 10,000, do some tests with a portion of the original movie (You could try broadband medium in the Use drop down menu). Initially FCP may show that the export is taking a long time (i.e. FCP shows an initial 7% done and seems to remain like that for rather long) but after a little while the operation is usually completed very quickly.
With regard to what is and isn't allowed on this forum take a look at the [Help & Terms of Use|http://discussions.apple.com/help.jspa] page.
G.

What type of quicktime conversion to fit a 15min mov under 4gig

I'm trying to convert a 15min video from FCP to a quicktime movie but the file size is huge. The video compression setting keeps it under 4gigs but it still looks pixelated. Any advice on settings that will keep it small enough for a DVD but still look good?
jp

If you're using iDVD, it only carries about the length of the movie, not the size. You can go up to 60 minutes with the Best Performance setting, up to 120 minutes with Best Quality
Export your movie from FCE as Quictime Movie (not Conversion) and drop that into iDVD.
With a length of 15 minutes, you should get very good results to DVD. You could also use Toast to burn the DVD

Audio and video out of sync when using quicktime conversion

hello,
i am editing a hdv project and want to export to quicktime. the client needs it in a specific size (700x394). they do not want the video in the file compressed, just the size of image. they are compressing the video through flash for the web. anyways, i used to just use quicktime conversion, custom size and use 700x394, but now when i do that the audio and video are sparadically out of sync in the product. the wierd thing is that the project plays fine in the timeline, but when i export the problem occours. i then, exported to a full res fcp movie and it is fine. then tired reexporting through qt pro to 700x394. when i did this their were no sync issues but the quality of the file was not so good, it look more pixely, certainly not as good as when i did it using quicktime conversion.
how can i export through fcp to get the 700x394 file? someone said 'use current settings' instead of using quicktime conversion? how do i do this? what do i need to do and what are my settings?
any help is appreciated. thanks a ton in advance.
cheers,
clay

What format are you converting the HDV to?
If it's animation, it is quite possible your computer can't pull the data rate. In this case it would be a processor / hard drive issue not an out of sync issue.
x

Instead of Compressor went Quicktime conversion (still problems)

Hi,
Thanx for all the suggestions regarding compressor. I didn't even consider doing Quicktime conversion for my DVDSP2. I did this last night with a two pass knowing it would take along time. After about 9 hours with some 18 to go ( the piece is 78 minutes) I got two errors, one from my system and one from FCP. FCP simply said "Out of memory". And what I'm assuming was from my system with the yellow triangle and exclamation point. "Your startup disk is nearly full. You need to delete some files."
What I don't understand about these is that I had "video" as my destination. This is a drive within my firewire drive that I had earmarked for just video and it has 23GB of memory in it which should be enough for this piece. Am I wrong?
I know that the other internal drive that I have just for graphics such as video does have a lot on it. A 200GB drive, it only has about 5GB left of memory. Can anyone enlighten me or point me to some articles.
Thank you in advance,
John

Your system drive functions as a virtual memory device. When the software you are running requires more memory that the physical ram you have, the hard disk pages in and out of RAM as needed. Since your spec doesn't mention ram below, I don't know how much you have, but once it filled, overflow started to fill up your system drive. If that becomes full, the system itself could shut down.
You can think of the disk as a pantry and shelf space and RAM as the kitchen table and counter top. When you run out of space for food preparation, you can put stuff back in the pantry or put partially prepared recipes on shelves for later completion.
And please don't call disk space MEMORY - it is not memory. Memory is RAM. Disk space is storage. Also, I should mention that the efficiency of your hard drive drops off SIGNIFICANTLY once it gets over 90% full.
make sense?
Patrick

Audio Does not export with ideo in quicktime conversion

I know i did something with a keyboard shortcut during the editing process, but i cant figure out what i did and how to change it back. What my issue is that when i try to export it to any format in quicktime (in quicktime conversion) the video is ok, but my audio does not export at all.
I dont know what went wrong but i should note i pressed something on my timeline that i didnt realize what it did. Its hard to explain what it looks like, when you press on different clips all the clips on my time line quickly turn a more silver/light color and then change back to the normal color(not effecting the video quality just the thumbnails). But it is has a weird color
is there a way i can reset all settings without adjusting my video clips?
Sound settings
Format: Lubear OCM
Channels: Stereo (L R)
Rate: 48.0000 hHz
Render Settings:
Quality: Normal
Linear PCM Settings:
Sample Size: 16 bits
Checked: Little Endian

Hi(Bonjour)!
Does the audio play when you run sequence?
Did you toggle off the monitor icon at the left side of timeline for audio track?
When export to quicktime conversion, select quicktime movie and click OPTION.
From this point, you should see a checkbox for SOUND. Be sure to check it ON.
Michel Boissonneault

Export w/ Quicktime Conversion - aduio destroyed

I do a weekly video for posting on Vimeo.com. My normal method is to finish the editing, then export using Quicktime conversion. This is the easiest method to get the final movie file I need for use on Vimeo.
About a month ago I created a new user account on my Mac. This is one that I have dedicated to video editing only as I'm working toward starting an event videography business. Anyway, the first of my weekly videos seemed to go OK, but now all of a sudden for the last two I can't get a usable video. The video portion of the movie is fine, but the audio is shot. It's all scratchy/staticy. When I go into FCP all plays fine there.
I exported the video as a movie with no audio, along with the audio file that was imported to FCP to begin with, and dropped them on the hard drive, then went to my own user account. When I tried to open the project I got some error about it being for a newer version of FCP, so I just created a new project, and imported the video movie and the audio clip, and it exported as it always has, perfectly fine.
So, I know something is out of place on the other user account, but what could it be?

I did trash all 4 of the prefs and it still does this. I've never seen the prefs manager before, so I'll give that a shot.
The audio that is used is an AIFF file. I get the file as an MP3 (that's how it's recorded live on the fly) and I use Sound Studio to save it as an AIFF. I have to do some trimming on it each week, and Sound studio is the easiest for what I need. In Final Cut it doesn't show that it needs rendering, and I generally don't, because when I do I've had major problems in the past that I still can't track down. What it will do is basically cut the audio into three sections, then reverse the first two. But just like this, when you go back into the project and play the time line all is as it should be.
Also another bit of an update, I got rid of the audio file from my project and re-imported it, and it worked. For some reason it's fine the first time, but if I go to do it again, it will corrupt it, except it's only corrupt in the project, not the file itself. That's how I ran into this to begin with - I have an intro clip that I always put on, and I had accidentally dropped the decibel slider in the timeline for that clip. Otherwise it was fine. So I went back and brought the slider back to where it should be, and that's when the troubles happened. Ironically the audio problems were not in the part with that clip, only the main video part.

Problems in Exporting in FCEx HD using Quicktime Conversion

I am currently editing video footage for web delivery using Final Cut Express HD and am having problems with the export using Quicktime conversion. When exporting to a Quicktime movie, there are no problems with the export. When exporting to MPEG-4 using Quicktime conversions, the audio is fine but the video image is very choppy and quality is significantly reduced. Is there a filter I need to apply to enhance the video for MPEG-4? Are there specific settings that work best with MPEG-4 in H.264?
Thanks for the help

MPEG-4 export only works in specific frame sizes. The greater the image size the higher the data rate you'll have to use to produce a good quality image. The quality of the compression is going to be to a substantial degree dependent on the quality of the original recording and the original compression.
YouTube uses Flash video for delivery BTW, not MPEG-4.

Export-- Quicktime Conversion totally corrupts??? (help!)

Ok,
in FCP 5.1.2 in an HDV timeline (1080i, Sony Z1U) my clips play fine.
When I export to quicktime movie, my HDV movie works great and I can convert it to other formats, including DV/NTSC standard def.
However, if I try to (directly from my HDV timeline) export to quicktime conversion (DV/NTSC codec, high quality, 720x405 standard definition 16:9) things get weird. some of my movie looks and sounds good, but seemingly random clips from my movie are out of sync. I examined it carefully and found that during the export, some clips actually shifted around timecode-wise. Hard to explain. Basically, within my exported SD movie, some clips from my timeline start a half second or so before they actually should.
My movie is a documentary. When it cuts to someone for an interview, for example, playing the timeline shows them begin speaking when they should. Export to an SD version, and suddenly when it cuts to the speaker, they are looking at the camera, and then blink a few times, and then begin speaking, even though the audio is playing out of sync now with the video. Somehow FCP is reaching into my clips' handles-- footage that is not even visible in any track-- footage that is before where the timecode says the clip should start.
examining the files directly in the finder reveals all to be well, as far as i can tell. but obviously there is corruption of some kind, either the codec or my drive. but I tried two different computers and it did the same thing.
anybody understand my problem? make sense at all? my FCP problems never seem like problems others have had.

I think you need to do that render/resolve thingie before exporting HDV...
Patrick

Quicktime Conversion Issues!

I am using my new MacBook Pro 2.33 to edit a 2 minute piece that I want to upload to the web. Ive used Quicktime conversion in the past to upload several other videos to my website. For some reason, everytime I try to export my finished project to Quicktime Conversion, it says: FILE ERROR: UNKNOWN FILE!
What is this all about? How can it be an unknown file? The project is still sitting on the timeline! Just out of curiousity I selected Send to Compressor and it sent it with no problem. I also tried Export> Quicktime Movie and that worked with no problem but I am havng issues with Quicktime Conversions.
Any suggestions?

Which format were you choosing? If it was the MPEG-2 option, chances are you're running QT 7 and no longer have the MPEG-2 Export Component installed on your system.
If that's the case, use Compressor for MPEG-2 and AC3 encoding ... that's what Apple is trying to force us to do by dropping the MPEG-2 support in QT Pro.
-DH

Export Quicktime Conversion

What would be the best all around specifics for an exported movie file that contains only JPegs (about 300+) and .aiff music files?
It's basically a slide show of sorts, but the last time I exported it to check out how it would look on tv, the images would come out with blurry or sharpened sides as they would transition into eachother, and would sometimes turn black and white momentarily.
Also, it's looks a little "stretched" on the tv screen. Kind of like Violet Beauregarde that the end of Willy Wonka :P
Thanks!

Since you are using FCE you should first choose the +sequence format+ for your movie depending on your TV (whether standard or HDTV) before importing your jpegs.
Assuming you'll show your movie on a standard TV your sequence format should be either DV-PAL (25 fps) or DV-NTSC (29,97 fps), I'm not sure what's used in Perto Rico. If you want a 16:9 format you should instead choose either DV-PAL Anamorphic or DV-NTSC Anamorphic.
Then after importing your jpegs and editing the timeline you should *Export/Quicktime Movie* (not Using Quicktime Conversion) and import the resulting .mov into iDVD.
Some notes for SD:
- the resulting quality will always be lower than the original jpeg quality, since the SD resolution is very likely lower than the original jpeg resolution
- don't rely on the quality as shown by Quicktime Player, because this is not meant for interlaced video but progressive video; also the FCE Canvas cannot show the final quality on a Mac progressive monitor
- you could check the movie quality while editing in FCE (without exporting and burning DVDs) by connecting your Mac to your TV through the firewire connection and a converter, or your camera used as a converter, from firewire to analog.
- you may then fix each image and check right away how it will appear on your final TV by applying any useful filter: blur, antialias, etc.
If instead you have a HDTV you may use a sequence formatted with one of the Apple Intermediate Codecs available in FCE, and for sure you will get a better final quality.
Piero

QuickTime Conversion Exporting HDV

Hi,
The camera I used was a Sony HDV 1080i60 and my movie is about 10 minutes in length. Just a simple video with fade in and fade outs with audio.
It seems that when I convert by exporting to QuickTime Movie, there is no issue. However, when exported through certain settings under QuickTime Conversion, the 'cross dissolve' effect does not seem to appear properly.
Can anybody suggest a standard setting for this?
Thank you.

Hi Muglho,
You should really use QT movie, same settings self-contained and not QT conversion as the latter causes further coompression to your video and possible loss of quality (HDV is an heavely compressed format).
gogi

"Quicktime Conversion" quality drop

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