Video capture quality loss

I am having a major problem with video capture resulting in poor quality playback. I am capturing from a canon HV20 into an firewire 400 500 Gig hard drive. I am getting vertical distortion on the capture. When I look at the camera screen or output to a TV, everything is sharp.
My question is what would be causing this? Do you think that eSATA would solve it? I am waiting on my new eSATA card to arrive in the mail, and that will be hooked up to the external.

Hi T-Frangoo-
Greetings and welcome to the Apple boards
This is exactly how I do it. I use a cheap Canon camera as a playback deck so as to save wear and tear on the ol' XL2.
Luck-
-DP

Similar Messages

TV Anywhere poor video capture quality

I have a Celeron 1.7, 20 and 60 gig hd at 7200 rpm, 512M of ram. My capture is of very poor quality. I have used the MSI software and also Virtual Dub. Still poor video capture quality. Anyone tell me what I can do or how to do this right?
geo-ela

If you use a compressing codec in real time, you need lotsa CPU.
Try using a lossless codec such as Huffyuv (you'll need lotsa disk) for the real time capture and then compress afterwards.

Had some old movies from reel to reel on a vcr. i converted these to mp4 format using pinnacle video capture, quality was not great but it was decent enough on my computer. when i placed these on my ipad it was much worse and very choppy. i have handbra

had some old movies from reel to reel on a vcr. i converted these to mp4 format using pinnacle video capture, quality was not great but it was decent enough on my computer. when i placed these on my ipad it was much worse and very choppy. i have handbrake and thought i could maybe change the movie so i could play it on ipad but dont know what dimensions or framerate etc. currently the movie on the computer is in 640 x 480 mpeg 4 aac. thanks derek

Jon,
What Julianne said at first about re-linking made perfect sense and I followed it easily, had actually already been there. But in my situation now, it didn't have any effect. The directory of folders which had already been added were still just as they were, and the outstanding balance are not in the desired position. And the folders which had been brought in earlier today when I clicked "synchronize folder", were still missing all the metadata.
Maybe this means I need to start over, and I'm fine about doing that that, but I don't know what it takes to accomplish that. I'm concerned now that any changes I make out of guesswork could only make the problem harder to resolve. It just feels to me like something I did at the beginning just wasn't right, and now it's a tangle.
Can you advise?
Thanks,
Gary

Is the video capture quality of Quicktime inferior to that of iMovie/FCPX?

Hi, I currently have a Sony handycam I am using to convert Hi-8 tapes into a digital file. I am having a ton of trouble with iMovie/FCPX having issues with my timecodes inside the tapes. Therefore, I have resorted to using Quicktime player as a video capture software by choosing "New Movie Recording" under the "File" menu. However, I am curious how the quality would compare to that of iMovie/FCPX if they actually worked for me. Additionally, how might this compare to a windows AVI type capture software? The video capture currently in Quicktime takes up a lot of memory, at the tune of 56 GB per 2 hour tape. I have included a description of one of the files I saved. Any comments would be greatly appreciated, thanks!!

See [this thread for some samples|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2624128&tstart=25]

Quality loss after exporting 1280 x 960 30fps footage

Hello everyone,
Everytime I edit and export footage shot with my GoPro camera (1280x960p, 30fps) the quality gets a little less. Very frustrating as I am clueless after a long time of looking for what I'm doing wrong..
I use Premiere Pro Version 4.2.1
Sequence presets:
General
Editing mode: Desktop
Timebase: 29,97fps
Video Settings
Frame size: 1280h 960v (1,0000)
Frame rate: 29,97 frames/second
Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square Pixels (1.0)
Fields: No Fields (Progressive Scan)
Export settings:
Format: H.264
Preset: Custom
TV Standard: NTSC
Frame Width: 1280
Frame Height: 960
Frame Rate (fps) 29.97
Field Order: None (Progressive)
Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square Pixels.
Has anybody got an idea what could help here?

Thanks for the replies guys, but unfortunately the problem isn't really solved yet..
I tried checking the maximum render quality, but that only resulted in my laptop not being able to smoothly play the exported video.
Filming with the 1280 x 720 setting is possible, but then the footage just doesn't look that sharp.. (as I can't film in 60fps, I got the first GoPro 960).
I installed Cineform and converted a little test video to AVI. This resulted in an export video without quality loss, but the conversion with Cineform took way too long for it to be a practical solution cause I edit a lot.
At last, Abhishek Kapoor, I couldn't find the video setting you're talking about to increase the maximum bitrate.
Any other ideas that might work?

I am attempting to convert 8mm video cassettes to dvd using a video cassette player, elgato video capture with rca/usb connections to the mac, editing in imovie and burning on idvd. The picture quality is awful. What can I do?????

I am attempting to convert 8mm video cassettes to dvd using a video cassette player, elgato video capture with rca/usb connections to the mac then editing in imovie and burning dvd-r using idvd. The picture quality is awful. What can I do??????

At what point is the video quality bad? Is it bad on capture? I would recommend using an s-video 1394 firewire converter instead. They capture the video at a higher bit rate. If you have a lot of 8mm tapes to capture, invest in a stand alone DVD recorder. They capture and compress in one shot. If you need to rip it back from the DVD into iMovie again, I would recommend using DVDxDV.

Video quality loss

I am importing video from a DVD using "Mac the Ripper", then converting the VOB files using "Video converter for mac 3.2.6".
Making up the my movie in Imovie 06 sending it to Idvd 08, and then burning a disc image using the best performance setting.
This all works fine except the quality from the original DVD is much better than the final result, being digital I thought there would not be much quality loss.
Is there a better way to achieve this without losing video quality. Or should I use different settings in any of the programs, (I have not changed settings from default setting in "Mac the Ripper" or "Video Converter".
Any advice appreciated, I am new to this process, but apart from quality loss I am having success.

Noted Bazmond, but we have to be careful!
You need to convert the VOB files back to DV which iMovie is designed to handle. For that you need mpegStreamclip:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/video/mpegstreamclip.html
which is free, but you must also have the Apple mpeg2 plugin :
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2/
which is a mere $20.
Another possibility is to use DVDxDV:
http://www.dvdxdv.com/NewFolderLookSite/Products/DVDxDV.overview.htm
which costs $25.
Obviously the foregoing only applies to DVDs you have made yourself, or other home-made DVDs that have been given to you. It will NOT work on copy-protected commercial DVDs, which in any case would be illegal.

What quality loss is there when cam videos are compressed sent over email?

What quality loss is there when sending videos taken with the iPhone 3GS over email? It seems that it's being compressed in preparation for being sent over email.

Hi Ric,
The Canopus ADVC-100 works fine with FCE. Here are a few tips -
First, make sure you only connect or disconnect it from your Mac when both your Mac and the ADVC-100 are turned off. Make sure that your camera video-out is connected to the s-video port on the front of the ADVC-100. Ditto for the audio connections. Only DIP switch 2 (IRE level) should be in the ON position. Connect a FW cable from your Mac to the 6-pin FW port on the back of the ADVC-100.
Second, once they are connected via FW, make sure the ADVC is turned on and actually in analog-in mode before you start FCE. I have often found the ADVC-100 resets this mode by itself after being turned off or idle for an extended time. (All you need to do is hit the silver button once or twice, depending on the current mode, in order to switch it into Analog-in mode.) If it is not in this mode, FCE will not detect the ADVC and will act as if there is no device connected. (Normally there is a warning message if FCE fails to find a camera or ADVC connected however if you turned off that message at some earlier time you would not see it again.)
Third, you can use either the DV-NTSC or DV Converter easy setup in FCE. I have used both with my ADVC-100 and they both work.

Quality Loss When Importing Video into Timeline...Any Ideas??

Hey all -
I'm fairly new to CS4, so excuse me if this question is a little dumb.
I've offered to edit a friend's actor showreel to familiarize myself with CS4. He gave me a bunch of HD clips: they're .MOV files, and are 1920x1080 and 23.976fps.
I can import a clip and drag it into the preview screen in the middle: it looks fine. However, when I drag it onto the timeline, it suddenly looks faded and blurred. It's not horrible, but it loses the vibrancy of color, the sharpness and the contrast of the original clip. A lot of the quality is gone.
I've tried opening the project with a number of different settings, no difference. I thought it might look OK when I exported it, but it looks just like it does on the timeline monitor: a little washed-out, blurred, just not as nice as the original.....
I'd hate to present it to my pal looking like this, can anyone suggest a solution? I tried everything I could think of already....
Thanks!!
B

Hi Hunt -
many thanks for your reply. I've spent the last couple of days trying to follow your advice and do more research.....still no luck.
Firstly, I upgraded my OS to Windows 7, thought it might help for some reason. Didn't. I downloaded a bunch of codec packs.
Gspot reports:
Codec: AVC1
Name: H.264
Codec Status: undetermined
So I'm basically running through all the possible output formats, but really it doesn't seem to be an encoding problem: the quality loss happens as soon as I move the file from the preview screen to the timeline.
If you have any othe suggestions I'be very pleased!!
Thanks
Bruce

Elgato video capture versus digital 8 camcorder to import hi 8 movies

Hi!
I have hi 8 video tapes which i want to import into my MacBook.
I would like to work on them with iMovie 09, cut them, set titles etc. put music on and so on.
Earlier I plugged my hi 8 camcorder into my panasonic DMR E85H dvd recorder with built in hdd.
Then i importet them via handbrake into my MacBook.
Then i importet them into iMovie 08 an did some cutting and so on.
Then i recognized, that there where horizontal interferences in the movie.
On the dvds the video is ok!
It doesn´t matter if i play the videos in Quicktime or in iTunes or iMovie.
If i would use a Elgato Video Capture to import or a digital 8 camcorder to import the videos to my MacBook would i be able to get a better result?
Which one should i prefer - i have to buy each of them!
Would the size of the camcorder-imported videos be bigger then with the Elgato device?
Now i´m using iMovie 09.
Thanks a lot for helping me out!

Based on your comments about horizontal interferences, it may be that you are seeing interlace artifacts. The solution may be to deinterlace the clips.
You might try checking the settings in handbrake to deinterlace.
You might also take the clip you have produced in HB and deinterlacing using a free tool like MPEG Streamclip or JES Deinterlacer.
Your MPEG2 on DVD is already compressed from the original on tape. Then HandBrake decompresses and recompresses it to h.264. You generally want to cut out compression steps in your workflow whenever possible, because each generation of compression will introduce noise and loss.
You could also reimport from DVD using MPEG Streamclip (and the Apple QuickTime MPEG2 Playback Component). You could deinterlace at this step if needed.
You could certainly import through a camcorder with passthru capability. It will be DV which will be a very high data rate and potentially high quality, but it will never be higher quality than the underlying analog material. But you will have eliminated a compression step so you will be closer to the original.
ElGato products will certainly work as well. I use the ElGato EyeTV hybrid to capture from a VHS Deck, as well as to record high definition TV shows. My ElGato will capture to MPEG2, although the newer models may capture directly to MPEG4 (not sure). You would then use the ElGato software to export to iMovie in an editable format such as h.264 or Apple Intermediate Codec.

Significant quality loss and jagged diagonal lines when exporting from FCP

I've been working on this problem for several days and I'm going insane! Every time I export my movie from Final Cut, there is a significant quality loss. It is most noticeable in two ways: diagonal lines become very jagged (looking somewhat like diagonal lines in an older video game -- more a diagonal sequence of blocks); also, in some areas such as faces, the colors get a little blurry and there seems to some "pooling" of colors around the edges of the face.
I'm pretty sure the problem's not in capture: the Quicktime clips that I captured from the camera are all pristine. When I play them in Quicktime, I can blow them up several times their original size, and they maintain their sharp lines. (I also Reverse Telecined them all with Cinema Tools, if that's relevant.) I also know the problem's not just my computer monitor; when I play these movies on my external monitor and TV, they look bad too. The clips look bad after I bring them into Final Cut, and while I'm editing, but at first I figured that was because Final Cut sometimes doesn't show full resolution in the timeline. Still, when I export, the quality of the original captures just isn't there.
Some details:
Captured from 24A progressive, Sony HVR V1U HDV.
Using Final Cut 6.0.1, Compressor 3.0.1, Quicktime 7.2.0, OS 10.4.10 (all the most recent versions I believe).
I've exported in many different ways: using Compressor (and have tried a number of different settings: the DVD Best Quality 90 Minutes default Setting, as well as using a variety of bit rates from 3.0-8.0, One pass CBR, Two pass CBR, Two pass VBR, Two pass VBR best; Video Formats NTSC, HD 1440x1080...I have tried many combinations. Regardless of the size of the m2v created, the files seem to have the same problem over and over. I've also tried exporting from Final Cut as a Quicktime Movie and with Quicktime Conversion. Same result. I also tried using different compressors with my Final Cut sequence: Apple Intermediate Codec (which I used when capturing -- you have to with the Sony HVR), HDV 1080p24, HDV 1080i60, Apple Pro Res 422, H.264...
What's happening? Why is Final Cut turning my nice pristine captures into jagged foulness? What can I try that I haven't yet?

Welcome to the forums!
Unfortunately, you seem to have tried everything I can think of, and I don't have the latest versions of FCP to know if it is a bug. However, in the off chance that you haven't given this a shot:
Take a problematic 10 second section of your timeline (set in and out points) and the Export -> Quicktime (not QT Conversion) and make sure that you have it on Quality settings that you captured, and select the "Make Self Contained" box.
Look at that in Quicktime and see if it's bad. If it's not problematic, use that video file in Compressor for your render.
Hope that helps!
~Luke

Huge quality loss in iMove '11

Hello fellow iMovie users.
Yesterday I upgraded to iLife 11 to get the new iMovie and its "new" audio editing capabilities. I could ofcourse just buy it from Mac App Store, but I am principally against App Store and its strict rules, so I choosed to get it the old way.
Anyway, I liked what i saw. Finally the new iMovie was about as good as the five year old one, and had some neat features like chroma key and cropping.
So I decided to start practicing and create a short video based on some old DV-videos filmed with my Canon MV950 DV-PAL camera.
I imported the footage into iMovie, and noticed some significant quality loss after the import.
And it get worse. After I exported the video, it seems like it is heavily compressed, even if I'm exporting to QuickTime and selects the highest quality possible.
I have some screenshots to show you the differences.
This is the original DV-footage.
The imported video. Notice the higher compression and the choppy edges.
And this is the exported video. Notice the insanely bad quality, especially in dark areas.
Is there any way to fix this, or do I have go back to iMovie HD?
PS. Sorry if my post is a bit unreadable. I'm from Norway.

Steve,
While I agree everyone should have owned a HD camera by now, there are a lot of low-end SD cameras that are still being sold today. In this era of our economy, consumers are sensitive to prices; especially low or lower prices.
And unlike the video camcorder boom of the 80s with Sony introducing the Video8 handycam (shoulder mounted camcorder), people today do not video using traditional camcorders. Most either do it through a digital camera, DSLR, iPhone or blogger cameras and are already mostly in an acceptable progressive format. There is nothing wrong with DV style cam. Canon GL-2 and the Panasonic DVX-100 are still commanding such a very high price tag for cameras of older technology and still being repaired goes to show that there are people out there still using it.
If one can convert quality interlaced footage into quality progressive footage, you can use that footage and create good results using iMovie 11. I agree with you and Tom that iMovie 11 captures interlaced footage in full. But what's the use if it can't make a good product in the end that looks like what iMovie 6HD can do and when there are PC software out there including the free Windows Movie Maker that can do this with no problem.
Consumers, unlike some of us, only relate to past software used and are usually benign to the fact of progressive vs interlaced. I have dealt with some mis-informed customers that they believed FULL HD only means 1080p at 60fps; anything else is not. I digress.
With Mac users, they don't necessarily follow the same upgrade frequency as PC users either. Macs generally last a lot longer between upgrades compared to a PC because they don't have to run a barage of virus/spam/anti-malware growing definition files which ultimately slow an otherwise healthy PC down. Macs do not have to worry about this.

Shaky video, less quality after exporting

Hello everyone!
Today i tried recording a Euro truck simulator 2 video, and after that a Sniper Elite V2 video with Fraps. The output files become .AVI files.
It looked perfect when i was looking at the raw footage, aswell as when i edited it and saw it in the preview window of Premiere Pro CS5. Im running it clean, so i've added nothing to it.
Im running on Windows 8.
Though, when i exported it, it started getting a little shaky getting a rather big quality loss aswell as black borders appearing in the video that i fixed in the preview/editing.
If anyone can help me out, i'd appreciate it. i have googled and looked at all the results that i've found and nothing have helped. I think its my third or fourth attempt on exporting and still failing at this time, and its the first video EVER to do this, which is abit weird.
My Export Settings :
Video Settings:
NTSC
1920x1080 (If it matters, when i recorded it i recorded it on my 1440x900 monitor)
59.94 fps
De-interlaced
Target 12,00
Max 18,00 Mbps
VBR 1 Pass
Pixel Aspect Ratio : Widescreen 16:9
Profile : High
Audio Settings:
AAC
192kbps
48 kHz
Stereo
Audio Quality : High
Example on the shaking and loss of quality : Euro Truck Simulator 2 | Peterbilt 389 | Logitech G27 | - YouTube

Screen capture programs sometimes (often) create video that is hard to edit... some notes
NOTE - do NOT use a Variable Frame Rate capture setting !!!
Free Open Source software http://camstudio.org/
-use with Lossless Lagarith http://forums.adobe.com/thread/875797
http://www.pixelmetrics.com/
Some of these notes are for Premiere Elements, but may help with PPro
Fraps & Elements http://forums.adobe.com/thread/967201
-and Elements preset http://forums.adobe.com/thread/943772
-and more Elements http://forums.adobe.com/thread/871095
Camtasia http://forums.adobe.com/thread/836800
-and Lagarith Codec http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1287577
-and http://forums.adobe.com/thread/775288
-and http://forums.adobe.com/thread/453044
-and http://forums.adobe.com/message/3202148
Techsmith codec http://forums.adobe.com/message/3692768
-and http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1046914?tstart=0
BB Flashback http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1074014
XSplit recorder http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1160940
Elgato http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1163126 w/picture
Dxtory http://forums.adobe.com/message/5172056
Bandicam read #10 http://forums.adobe.com/thread/954394
Hauppauge MPEG-2 TS http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1285168
-and http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1289304 for MANY links

Capture quality

can somebody please help i recently bought a macbook pro 17" with 2gb of ram and final cut studio. for whatever reason when i capture into final cut and into i movie the capture quality is terrible. i am in a pal region and have tried every setting there is, a friend who works in special fx could not sort out this problem. if anybody has any idea it would be greatly appreciated i have tried different tapes and different capture devices so i am maybe thinking it could be a hardware proble, i dont know but i am seriously lost with the whole situation.

Well, that is very unusual. As far as I know, when DV comes across a Firewire interface into a computer, it is not touched at all. In other words, whatever is the encoding quality of the original should show up at the same quality level on the computer. There is no "generation" loss to this transfer. Here are some things I would check:
- Does the video look good played directly off the camera to a TV monitor? That would confirm that it is recording properly. If it looks bad right off the camera, without the Mac even being involved, then you need to figure out why the camera is capturing poorly. But it sounds like you have already done this.
- What are the file sizes like when importing the video from the camera to the Mac over the FW interface? The files should be quite large. It should take about 200 MBytes of disk for every minute of video, so about a gigabyte for five minutes of video. If the files are a lot smaller than that, then that would mean a format translation and compression of some form is taking place during the import, even though that should not be happening. There should be no codec involved during the import stage. The DV should be coming straight across. It is put in a QuickTime wrapper of some kind, but that shouldn't make it any smaller or degrade the quality at all. So check the file size.
- Could it be that you don't have Intel-native versions of the applications involved? If FCP or iMovie are running as PowerPC applications under the Rosetta emulator, maybe that is where the problem lies. Not sure but something to consider. Good luck.

Capturing quality

I want to capture video with my sony dv-cam camera. The material is recorded on DV-cam, not normal DV. In the capture presets I used "DV Pal 48 KHz." Is there any quality loss with this setting or is there a setting which can make the quality better?
How do I capture with no quality loss at all?
I have the latest updates of everything on my Intelbased mac.
thanks in advance

What David said. The difference between DVCAM and straight DV is that the tape travels faster over the heads in DVCAM, thus giving more tape area for the data of each field/frame. Also the audio is locked to the video so that you don't get any drift over time like you do with straight dv.

Video capture quality loss

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