Magic Bullet Looks quality loss?
 

Does using MBL degrade the quality of the video at all? Maybe I'm staring at this too hard, but it doesn't look as sharp after adding some of the color effects. Thoughts?

Hmmm.... well I guess that depends on what filter you are using, and the settings. I tend to use them sparingly in some of my wedding work, and lean twoards the filter sets that produce more of a film look.

But I do know for sure that there are some choices that maintain the sharpness of the original footage.

If you have FCS2, checkout some of the presets in Color.

Chad,

I've never experienced a noticeable loss of sharpness, but I have noticed increased noise if you use exposure or curves effects (as would be expected). That may affect sharpness as well.

What filters are you using?

Luke

Very aggressive grading will degrade quality most times, especially with HDV. Light grades will be hunky-dory. That's just my experience though.

If you are editing in DV or HDV then it will degrade the image quality. Working in Prores, or rendering in Prores will improve this.

You can also limit the quality degradation by going to sequence:setting:video processing and select render all YUV material in high precision YUV.

In addition, at the completion of editing, and before export, go to sequence:general:compressor and select uncompressed. By exporting from an uncompressed timeline you are bypassing the DV or HDV compression.

He appears to be working on a PC, so the Mac specific things won't help.

Magic Bullet Looks can really shift footage around. So I tend to work with 10-bit codecs when I am using them or doing any heavy coding work. Keeps things clean. Let me know if you want samples.