Very poor quality HDMI output to HDTV

I recently decided to switch from an Apple TV to Mac Mini for my media center.
I have an Insignia HDTV and the quality from the Apple TV was outstanding. When I plug the Mac Mini in, however, it is EXTREMELY poor. The picture appears blocky & pixelated.
Any suggestions on how to fix this?

Have you tried adjusting the resolution in System Preferences/Displays?
Dah•veed

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I must be doing something stupid: Very poor quality DVD rendering!

I am new to Apple products and after trolling this forum, I was able to create a DVD using iDVD on my Mac mini Core Duo - 2Ghz model. But, the video is of very poor quality (compression artifacts). I am lookging for guidance to creating a better video quality. But first, let me give you some background...
I have created enough DVDs for my home videos captured both from my S-VHS camcorder and min-DV camcorders (both PAL and NTSC) using Pinnacle Studio (buggiest software in the world) and Adobe Premiere Elements under Windows. I have clear expectation of video quality and understand the quality differences between various standards.
I have a fairly new toy - Canon Powershot TX1 digital camera which is an amazing compact camera that shoots 720p video @ 30fps and stores them in MJPEG format. Very good optics (10x optical image stabilized zoom). The only con is that it has very poor low light shooting ability.
The steps I took to create this DVD...
1. Import the .avi and .jpeg files from my camera into iPhoto library.
2. Use iMovie (all part of iLife'08) to stitch the avi clips and also some of jpegs. Added transitions, titles and music in iMovie.
3. Also, added some of my old low resolution avi files (from my older Canon camera - probably in 640x480 resolution).
3. Exported it in the largest file mode (960x540) which created a 1.8GB file.
4. Opened this movie file in Garageband and added the Chapter markers.
5. Shared it with iDVD which automatically launched iDVD and showed the chapters in very nice scene selections menus.
6. Invoked the Burn menu to burn the movie into a DVD using iDVD.
Am I using the right methodology (I want the chapters)? I also observed that an earlier project which was pure 15 minutes of 720p content created a 4.7GB size exported file from iMovie whereas this current project has 51min of avi (of which about 10min is low res and the rest is in 720p format) and 12min of still photos produced a 1.8GB file when exported. This clearly tells me that the exported file is of poor quality. Why did that happen? Was it because I mixed the content and included low res videos?
I should probably try creating a DVD from the pure 720p content and see how that looks.
Any pointers would be a great help. BTW, the mac mini, iPhoto and iMovie forums are just awesome. The quality of posts and responses is very high.

Thanks a lot, F Shippey.
I exported it as a .dv file and then I was able to produce the DVD correctly with the Revolution theme and 11 chapters. I haven't done any editing any clips yet in iMovie. In most cases, I will not need to do that in most cases as the Canon TX1 creates individual avi clips every time I record and stop a recording. Having used a camcorder for over a decade now, I know how silly most of the recordings are.
I will be rendering most of my videos as h.264 so that I can use the mac mini as a media server instead of using DVDs. I have to rip my own DVDs as h.264 soon (back to handbrake).
PS: While creating my first DVD in OS X + iLife'08 tools, I noticed the following bugs:
1. The clips disappear from the display in the editing window when the project becomes large and I had to zoom in and out to make them reappear. I verified that I wasn't viewing past the end of the last clip. If I hover the mouse in the blank window, it will show the clip in the preview window on the right.
2. I had 11 chapters marked in Garageband and then I shared it with iDVD, it created two pages of scene selections with 6 chapters in each page. In the 2nd page, it added a random window (unconnected) for the 12th chapter that I didn't have. I didn't check for that and so my finished DVD has this weird 12th chapter with a copied moving clip in the window, but when selected, it doesn't do anything.
These two bugs are way few compared to what Pinnacle Studio threw at me.
Message was edited by: new2appletv

Very poor quality ichat video

I am new to ichat and I have very poor quality video links with my family. One in CA and the other in TN both are on macs. They are both very fragmented and broken up. Also there is a huge delay in the audio. Please help....I can't see my new nephew. Thanks

i am also having issues with my ichat video quality, and there is a delay on audio sometimes. i chat with my friend in philly; i am in brookyn, ny. sometimes the audio is in sync, and then sometimes we have a delay. but the video quality is so blurry on my end...i can barely see her. but her video of me is fine. my preview screen looks great, the connection doctor says everything is good.
i'm not very good with macs tho and computer jargon. i need someone to help me, but who can walk me thru this stuff like im in first grade.

Very poor quality on photos made with iphone 4

Since a few weeks i've noticed that photos made with my iPhone 4 have a very poor quality. I've upgraded to IOS 4.3.2 thinking about a software problem, but the quality is still very poor. It´s like out of focus. I submit a just made photo. Any answer? Thanks a lot.
This photo is made with original photo app and no zoom.

Only thing I can think of is a focus problem (which could be software) or a lens with some junk on it that causes some blurring.
Can't offer a solution but can make some suggestions.
Take different types of pictures and, just for variety in case it reveals something, take two of each - one touching the screen and then one after touching for comparison.
Do close-ups and distance shots. Do indoor and outdoor, with and without flash on the indoor - again, of the same thing so you can compare.
Might reveal a pattern. If all are bad, then it probably goes back to the lense or software not working.
If some come out fine, it would seem to reduce the chance of it being the lens being dirty or something. On the other hand, if close up shots look good but distant ones don't, it could be either software or the internal focusing hardware isn't adjusting enough for distant shots.
Just some things to consider.

Poor quality video output from iMovie 08

I have tried to save or export videos on several occasions, their output quality is always very poor.
Recently, I needed to translate videos from MPG, MOV, AVI etc.. using various translation tools. I am not sure how much quality I lost during those translations (I wish iMovie would import something, anything!).
I have saved my projects and also tried exporting to the highest resolution in both cases. When playing back within PowerPoint or QuickTime (7pro or 10) the quality is so bad I almost can't recognize the people in the video.
Does iMovie 09 do a better job with output or am I just using the wrong tool?
Thanks in advance.

not sure if i'm having the same issue or not, but i'm having problems with iMovie 08, and exporting my finished project, and having the frame rate be goood, or the resolution stay good, or both. I've tried m4v, avi, mpeg4 and they worked in quality in that order, but m4v still didn't have as good as resolution as the original file. Is there an option that automatically goes with original framerate, and resolution? What should I be doing for best visual quality in general?

Very poor quality capturing standard-dv from an HD-DV camera

I used a Sony HDV-FX1 to record standard (non-HD) dv video at 16:9 which looks fine in the camera and on the screen during playback but when I actually capture the footage, the video quality comes out very poor ( http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/2636/videocaptureen5.png ). HD recordings from this camera capture perfectly but I can't seem to capture standard-dv video at any acceptable quality. I've tried this in FCP5 and iMovieHD and both are equally bad. Does anyone have experience with this? Thanks,
-Tom

DV video is VERY compressed. 5:1 and in a 720x480 frame. OF COURSE it will look worse than HD. HDV is 1920x1080, A LOT more pixels to work with.
And never ever EVER judge the quality of your footage using FCP or quicktime. EVER. That is NOT what your footage really looks like.
Shane's Stock Answer #2: Blurry playback
ONLY JUDGE THE QUALITY OF YOUR MATERIAL ON AN EXTERNAL NTSC MONITOR, OR AT LEAST A TV.
The canvas shows you what happens after the codec you are working with has been applied. The viewer shows you the material in its native format.
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.
Shane

Export to HQ DVD very poor quality

Hi all,
I've been trying to export to an HQ DVD, meaning I've chosen the highest settings, ending up with a 5552Mb File for 75 mn... which I believe would be enough to have a very high "normal"definition .
ok I know it wouldn't fit but I burned 10mn of timeline with these settings, to check, and the quality is very poor. I believe as bad as a VHS second generation copy... My titles appear like a very low photoshop jpg compression, and all lignes and shapes are surrounded by some kind of compression artefacts not acceptable even in normal def. (not mentioning the interlaced lines at the edit point when the clip has been altered in size or color etc...) You get the picture...
I had a look at the calculator, that is not much help finally when exporting from premiere.
What I want to do is export my (xdcam hd 50mbps 1080 50i).mxf timeline to a beatiful dvd that everybody can play....
Should I go for a third party encoder?
Also, It seems that when I export and burn through Encore, I get a slightly vertically stretched frame, that ellipses the perfect circles I have on the timeline. Although I respect the pixel ratio of 1.0, 16.9 screen... wide screen etc... I always get this stretching. (Playing the file from the pc is correct.)
What puzzles me is to see some nice SD DVDs around, burnt from HD files and I'm not able to get at least the same results from a broadcast approved camcorder and premiere CS6.
Export settings are:
Help please... Thanks.

Glad to help.
I have been using Encore every since it was first released and on many occasions I have pruduced MPG files encoded at different rates so that I can demonstrate to the audience at my presentations how the different settings can affect the end MPG movie
With Encore I have found that the settings I gave you earlier give the best compromise results, in my tests having the max setting at its max position and the target above eight can produce flawed mpeg files. this is not as a resullt of one off encoding but I have repeated it with each version of Encore with varying results, certainly using Encore in my CS5.5 Suite produces softer DVD's than earlier versions, in my opinion that is..
With HD source my Panasonic HMC 150 Encore produces reasonable MPG SD files but the Canon 7 D produces more artifacts.
Enough of a remeniss and ramble, good luck
Addiitonally with the completed DVD there is a distinct difference depending upon which DVD player is used, using the same DVD my Sony 3D bluray player upscales better than my Panasonic Bluray recorder, whereas at a club I go to the Pioneer AV amp upscales the DVD even better, therefore I would conclude that the device playing back the DVD can have a vast effect on what you see.

Very poor quality with imovie

hi all
i have a canon hf200 that records mts file. 1920x1080
when i export my movie with imovie the quality of the video is very poor,i export as quicktime movie and i lose a lot of quality.
need i to convert mts file before import it on imovie?
ps:sorry for my english

To increase the quality of a video, one of the things you can do is by instead of exporting the video using Quicktime just select 'export movie...' from the share menu. You can then select what level of quality you want, after selecting what you want to name your movie and where you want to save it.

MBP Retina FaceTime HD Camera has very poor quality and artifacts.

Hey guys, the camera on my 2012 MBP 15' Retina has ridiculously poor quality. After recieving it I had got major artifacting while using the camera for skype, facetime and Google+. Usually the artifacting would continue (many multi-colored horizontal lines across the screen of the camera) until finally the bars would disappear maybe one or two bars would remain, regardless it was usable. I noticed, however, the quality was attrocious, but I assumed it was just how it was supposed to be (very surprised for a $2300 laptop). Recently my friend purchased the same laptop, after looking at his FaceTime HD camera, I realized mine was simply an attrocious fluke, my camera had ridiculous blurring and grain and awful light sensing. I am still under warranty until November 23rd, 2013. What are your opinions on how to get this resolved?
Here are some pictures:
Message was edited by: rpillai01 "Added pictures."

Call AppleCare which you should have done from day one.
After recieving it I had got major artifacting while using the camera
You had 14 days from the date of purchase to return your computer. No questions asked!

Help please -My HQ photos are being rendered in very poor quality in iMovie

Hi there
I have a problem I cannot solve in iMovie (HD 6.0.3).
I am making a movie/slideshow of photos using very high quality photos imported from Aperture. I'm finding them incredibly BAD quality when it comes to the rendering of finished product, the most obvious problem being the pixellation (seen as wavy lines) when the Ken Burns effect is used. It looks the worst on a plasma television, which it is being made to watch on.
I have burned it at the highest quality I can find, but there is still no improvement. Can anyone help please? I'm doing this as a gift for my parents, but don't want to send them something of inferior quality.
Thanks!
Carly

if you've burned it to DVD, then its probably a standard definition iMovie project which means that is 480 lines interlaced. it makes no difference how high quality the originals are, they'll still be re-sized down to 480 lines and since its interlaced, that means that you're only ever showing every-other line. and because standard definition alternates between the odd and even numbered lines, you'll probably see lots of shimmering in the highlights. it will look worse when you try to stretch it across a high-definition TV because there's interpolation going on to up-convert the whole thing back to the 720 or 1080 lines of high definition.
in short, you'll never really get super-high quality from a standard definition TV and you'll only get good results on a high-def TV if you keep everything high def (720p or 1080p) throughout the entire workflow. and until Apple updates its software to handle Blue-Ray or HD-DVD authoring, it'll be very expensive to master those kinds of discs!
best of luck,
scott
PowerMac G5 2.5GHz Mac OS X (10.4.8) MacBook Pro 2.0GHz

IMac 27 - very poor quality audio when using analogue headphone output

Hi,
I've had my iMac 27 (i7 quad core, early 2010, OS X 10.6.4), hooked up to my hi-fi via the headphone output jack (analogue) since i bought the machine a few months ago, and its worked fine. However, the audio quality has suddenly deteriorated. The volume is very low, meaning that I can only hear anything if I turn up my hi-fi volume all the way, and then the sound is distorted (as you'd probably expect). Turning up the volume on say, iTunes, whist playing a track, combined with turning up the iMac's output volume does cause an increase in overall volume, but it only makes the difference between totally inaudible and very quiet! Its as if there is some internal output- level setting within the iMac that has 'stuck' at a very low setting!
Troubleshooting actions carried out so far:
Removing the audio cable from the iMac's headphone socket allows the Imac to play via its own internal speakers, and this works fine! (The sound is good, volume is decent, no distortion). So, its just the headphone audio that is affected!
I've verified the sound settings in system preferences. They look fine.
I've performed several soft and hard reboots (with up to 24-hours separating power-off/power-on cycles), but to no avail.
I've booted into Windows XP (bootcamp) and the same audio problem persists (so its not the O/S that's causing the issue).
I've checked the cable and my hi-fi by removing the 3.5mm terminating plug from the imac and sticking into my mp3 player's headphone jack. All works fine. I then inserted the 3.5mm plug plug into my laptop's headphone jack. Again, perfect sound reproduction through my hi-fi. I then returned the plug to the imac's headphone socket and the audio problem re-surfaced, so its definitely the imac that is at fault.
I've ran the extended hardware tests too - no faults found.
I reckon its a hardware fault, but just wondered if anyone else had experienced the same problems?
Incidentally, my Imac is well within its 12-month warranty, but the complimentary 90-day Applecare cover has expired. Looks as if I'm going to have to make an appointment with a 'Genius', but I didn't want to go through the hassle of transporting the system unless necessary. Thankfully, I've had none of the other widely reported quality issues, and apart from this audio problem the machine has performed flawlessly.
Kind regards.

I have 30 new imacs running Snow Leopard. They replace 30 emacs that were running panther. I have 30 headsets (labtech) that worked beautifully with my emacs. Used them so my kids could create imovie projects using imovie 6. Well all that has changed with my new imacs. I went to use imovie 9 today and what a disaster. NONE of the headsets would work as they had on the emacs. The kids had to wiggle the plugs and that would sometimes create sound out of one channel, no channels, or would create a crackling sound. Worse than that is that it would give the kids the spinning beach ball. They would unplug the headsets and after about 1 minute imovie would return to normal. I took some of the headsets and tried them out on an emac I have in the room and they all work. I tried them on my macbook pro and they all work. So, it is not wiring or a plug. The sound prefs are setup correctly. Any suggestions? Has anyone else experienced this problem? Here I have new imacs which will allow more sophisticated projects with the iLife apps, but can't use them due to inoperable headsets. I have tried three different brands of headsets and 2 of them will not work at all. These were brand new imacs - right out of the box, and brand new headsets. This is very frustrating to me and the students.
Any help would be appreciated. How can apple not design a fully functioning headphone jack as they have in the past?

Poor quality video output

Hello to all as this my first post, I'm kinda hoping I can call upon the wealth of experience here to help sort out my issue as I really need your help.
Ok, here goes...
I produce architectural animations in 3dsmax, each frame is rendered out to targa & jpeg format as high quality stills @ 1280 x 720 resolution. For the simple stuff I have two passes, beauty and AO which are composited in Autodesk Toxic before being passed onto premiere CS4.
Now when I import the still sequences into premiere and add the titles and effects all looks well in the rendered preview, when I export to media encoder the video looks just awful with banding, fuzziness and artifacts a plenty.
I am not an experienced user, I've been stuck in at the deep end and i'm sinking fast. I've tried pretty much all out the format presets with limited success but have been totally unable to the the final output any where near the still quailty. I'd like a high quailty output matching the still resoultion which can be burned onto DVD and played on computer and through a DVD player.
Can anyone point me in the right direction or tell where I'm going wrong as I'm tearing my hair out with frustration and I'm already two days late on this.
Yours hopefully in anticipation of some helpful advice
Roy

Ok, having checked, the DVD requirement has been dropped which helps me a little, now the only requirement is to play on a pc connected to a large screen tv via HDMI.
So far, with the help from this forum, I've managed to export the sequence, in 1280 x 720p @ 24FPS to a bluray format which has an M4P extension. Despite installing the required codecs I can't play the file on the PC. Does this need further conversion? If so would this need to be done in Encore or another porgram?
Again, apologies for the endless questions but I really am up against my deadline here so any help & advice is very welcome.

Images on Robohelp are very poor quality/blurry or don't appear at all

Hello,
Any help on this problem would be greatly appreciated as I have been attempting to solve this for several hours a day for the past week.
I have a simple employee handbook in word (about 20 pages with images) that I’m trying to turn into an html-based document. I've tried a couple if things in order to get this file into robohelp. I've linked the word document to RoboHelp and worked with that, and I've also imported the word doc into framemaker and then linke my framemaker document to Robohelp.
I’ve managed to create the html version with a table of contents doing it both ways, but there are a few images in the word document that turn out really bad in the html version. They look fine in the word document and in pdf version, but when I view them in RoboHelp or in the html version of the document they’re very blurry and choppy. It almost looks as it pixels are missing. I’ve tried everything I could think of but nothing changes the quality of the image. As soon as I link the word document or framemaker document, when I click "view" on the specific image, or just view it from the handbook in Robohelp the image looks terrible.
Someone suggested that I checkmark "do not re-generate image" under project settings but now some of my images aren't appearing at all. All of my images are the same type but I've also tried changing it to png, or bmp, jpeg but nothing changes. They're either blurry or don't appear at all.
Thanks for any help or suggestions!

I don't know if this will help you, but I've had issues with poor image quality when importing Word documents into RH7. I see a fuzziness problem with most images--screen shot or not--but it seems really pronounced if the image in Word is reduced to less than 100%. To resolve this, I've opted to manually copy any Word images to another application (I use SnagIt), save them at 100% to PNG format (JPG and GIFs also work), and import the saved image files to Robohelp. That sounds like that's what you ended up doing with Photoshop.
Also, I wonder if it makes a difference how much the text was magnified/reduced when they took the original screen shots. I just did an experiment--using SnagIt, I took a screen capture of a block of text at 100% magnification. I then pasted the screen shot directly from SnagIt into my Robohelp document. It came in perfectly clean--couldn't see any obvious difference between the Robohelp text and the image of the Word text. I got the same results when I saved the screen capture to a PNG file and imported it that way. That leads me to believe the problem you're seeing is a result of having Word images automatically converted to RH.
(In the example--unfortunately hard to see-- the text in the red box is from a screen capture; the rest of the text was entered in RH8--there's no discernable difference in quality.)

Poor quality PDF output

Hi,
I have noticed that the PDF output when using Rome on Windows is quite poor and is far inferior to an outputted PDF from a Mac.
When you use a drop shadow on a piece of text it is displayed in low quality (even if the high quality option is selected on the filter). This is not the case if you generate an interactive PDF on a PC where the text is smooth and crisp with a beautiful drop shadow.

Hi Mike,
What version of CRJava runtimes are you using?
We have recently released a new version of the ruintimes, try upgrading to 12.0.18. download here.
http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-29757
- Bhushan
Senior Engineer
SAP Active Global Support
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Got Enhancement ideas? Try the SAP Idea Place

Poor quality video output - final cut studio 2

hi all,
i shot some footage in HD (1080p). it looks great in the clips from the camera as well as in fcp but when i output its very grainy. how can i retain the HD quality? i am not sure what i should be exporting it as. its going onto a dvd and will be used for commerical puporses in a small restaurant. i tried compressor but know next ot nothing about that and the footage came out the same.
thanks!

You need to focus (and maybe read a bit) on the output from FCP. Do not concern yourself with Compressor or anything else until you are happy with the output from FCP because it doersn't get any better than it is at that point.
If the 1080p shows up in your browser with a Compressor description of H.264, you need to transcode it into ProRes (or equiv) before editing.
Your timeline should be fully rendered, then export using File>Export>QuickTime Movie using Current Settings and make sure the "Make Movie Self-Contained" option is selected. This should look just like the timeline when played in QuickTime Player. If it doesn't, we'll need all your sequence settings and kindred info when you post back.
If it looks OK in QT Player, simply import it to Compressor and select the appropriate output format. If you're not sure what the format should be, post back with your presentation plans.
Good luck

Very poor quality HDMI output to HDTV

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