CS3 Program Monitor Quality Issues

[Bob Schneider]

I was wondering if anyone else was having program monitor quality issues with CS3. In Premiere Pro 1.5, the program monitor displayed crisp & fluid video. With CS3 it seems much less crisp & less fluid. My playback settings are set to "High Quality ". I am not saying that the program monitor quality is terrible or unusable, it is just not as good as with 1.5, or as good as it should be. I am using Vista with Quad 6600, & 3 gig ram. Video card is Nvidia Geforce 8400 GS.

Any Ideas? :(

Thanks

[Bob Schneider]

Just to elaborate on my previous post, I am using desktop monitoring with no external monitor. The video quality seems compromised in the capture window, project window, and program window. It seems to have minor issues with interlacing, jaggies, slight strobing effect, and struggles with horizontal or vertical lines. I played with project settings, capture settings, & playback settings. I just cannot seem to get it to appear as clean as it did in Premiere 1.5, and that was with a much slower machine. Am I missing something, or is that the way it is supposed to be?

Thanks

[Graham Hickling]

What source material are you have trouble playing - SD or HD? Avi, mov or raw mpeg files?

Do other applications (e.g., mediaplayer) play these same files smoothly?

I doubt you were you on Vista on your earlier machine, with 1.5 ... could the change in OS be a contributing factor?

[Bob Schneider]

Thanks Graham,

I am using SD. The windows media player definately plays the file cleaner than in the CS3 program window, or project window. I even notice problems in the capture window, though perhaps this is normal.

Yes the version 1.5 was on an XP machine, and the monitor view was very crisp with that older system.

Could it be Vista? That's what I am trying to figure out. Obviously CS3 is a resource hog, and I am running it with an operating system that is a resource hog. Not a good match perhaps. Do you know if Premiere is using the Nvidia graphics card to process the video in those monitor windows?

Thanks

[Graham Hickling]

With SD footage you should have absolutely no playback glitching in CS3, unless they are massive uncompressed files in which case your had drive speed might not be adequate But that would have affected 1.5 equally.

I have absolutely zero experience with Vista, but driver or codec issues involving it would be on my list of suspects.

[Bob Schneider]

I am wondering if there could ba an issue using an HDMI cable from my Nvidia card out to the 24" monitor? I only bring that up because typically it would be DVI. Could that effect anything seeing as I am using SD DV and not HDV?

An additional observation is that there is no detectible difference between "Draft Quality" or "Highest Quality" settings on the source view or program view monitors.

[Graham Hickling]

Given your Vista + HDMI combination, perhaps there could be HDCP (high definition content protection) issues interfering with playback?

Although your footage is SD, your videocard driver settings are presumeably such that the monitor is set to an HD resolution, which may be enough to trigger HDCP. (Really I have no clue what I'm talking about at this point ..... so hopefully someone knowledgeable with step in).

What resolution is your monitor, and does it support HDMI?

[Bob Schneider]

Graham,

The monitor supports up to 1920 x 1200, and uses a HDMI as the preferred input, though at that resolution text is way too small. Therefore I prefer 1440 x 900. I have tried many resolution settings as well, but the higher resolution actually made the problem slightly worse.

I was wondering if it was a similar phenomenon as using a standard def TV signal feeding a HD TV. Doesn't that produce an inferior picture to that of using the same standard def TV signal on an old crt TV?

[Mike McCarthy]

Yeah, don't try to preview SD at fullscreen on a 24" LCD. It is almost guarenteed to look bad.

[Graham Hickling]

If you're using your original monitor that wouldnt explain why 3.0 is worse than 1.5.

If you've changed your monitor as well, then that could be the explanation ...

[Bob Schneider]

Yes, it is a new monitor. I used 1.5 with XP & a small 17" LCD. I am now using CS3 with Vista & a 24" widescreen monitor, so everything has changed. I would have guessed that everything would have improved with the better monitor, better computer specs, and next generation of Windows & Premiere. Thats why I am puzzled.

[Douglas Turner]

...so everything's improved, apart from your SD footage!

You should set the preview window to 100%, otherwise with SD footage, if CS3 is set to 'Fit', then it'll be blown-up and look like, erm, blown-up SD footage!

Can you use DVI instead of HDMI, see if this improves the quality - and try to use the max. resolution possible, otherwise you're losing the point of owning a 24" screen... more screen real estate!

[Bob Schneider]

Douglas,

I did try maximizing the resolution, it was no better. I tried resizing the preview monitor to 100% and it actually got a little worse......more jaggies or what seems like interlacing issues. Not sure how to describe it exactly. I will now try switching from the HDMI cable to DVI.

Thanks

[Bob Schneider]

OK, so here are some of my test results. I switched from an HDMI cable to a DVI..... there was no noticable difference. I then hooked my old 17" LCD to the new computer via the DVI and noticed some improvement, it was better, but still not as clear as using version 1.5 using the old machine. I then tried using the 24" monitor on the old machine with again some improvement, but it looked like the SD footage struggled on the HD monitor.

The conclusion? I don't have one. If I was able to test HDV footage on the new system perhaps it would be fine. Until then, I will be puzzled as to why exactly I cannot produce clean video previews in the program monitors using CS3 and SD video on my new system. Unless of course someone else can add some more here. Does anyone else have this issue with SD on a 24" monitor and CS3?

Thanks

[Bob Schneider]

Anyone care to add thier 2 cents?