Why are capture quality options so limited?

Question

For some reason when I purchased the pro version of Quicktime (7.1.3) I thought I would be able to capture video in many formats. The only options I'm presented with are device native, MPEG-4 and H.264. I want to capture in a DV format that I can use in Final Cut Pro or iMovie. I can export a movie I have captured to DV, but would rather capture it in that quality. Since Quicktime is at the heart of Final Cut Pro and iMovie, why is the capture feature so limited? And isn't there any way to customize the screen size - or am I limited to 640 by 480? I'm not really impressed with the quality of my video captured in Device Native (despite using a Canopus ADVC 1394 capture card) and would like to try to get as uncompressed a video as possible. Any advice?

Answer 1

I want to capture in a DV format that I can use in Final Cut Pro or iMovie.
As Collin pointed out, the "Device Native" option is DV. However, be advised that QT Pro does not "lock" the frame rate as well as FCP, FCE, iMovie, Vidi, or a number of other editor and/or capture applications. The better question question here is, "Why aren't you capturing these files directly to whichever editor you plan to use?" Both Final Cut and iMovie will capture the files directly to your project at the same quality as your digital source file or commensurate with the capability of any analog-to-digital converter used.
Since Quicktime is at the heart of Final Cut Pro and iMovie, why is the capture feature so limited? And isn't there any way to customize the screen size - or am I limited to 640 by 480?
Once again, Colin is correct here. If you look at the "Show Movie Info" window for your captured movie you should see that the "Video Format" is "DV, 720 x 480 (853 x 480), Million." The 720 x 480 is the rectangular pixel aspect ratio while 853 x 480 is the square pixel rendering of the same data. Since QT is DV knowledgeable, it displays the file on a square pixel monitor as a standard definition VGA (640 x 480) display which would normally depict what you would see on a rectangular pixel SD TV. If the aspect ratio of your source is other than 4:3, then the display will be disported in the QT Player. However, as Collin attempted to point out, the Apple video editor applications should be able to correctly identify and display a properly encoded DV file. (Remember, capturing of SD letterboxed content will remain both SD and letterboxed so don't expect the software to perform any crop/rescale actions during captures.)
I'm not really impressed with the quality of my video captured in Device Native (despite using a Canopus ADVC 1394 capture card) and would like to try to get as uncompressed a video as possible.
Short of creating files from scratch on your computer, DV is about as uncompressed as your can get. Never used a Canopus capture card but have been more than satisfied with the ADVC-300 box. Biggest impact on quality will likely be the quality of the actual source files and how they are getting to your card.