DV Info Net - Picture Quality difference: direct-from-camera vs captured-on-FCP-iMac

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Picture Quality difference: direct-from-camera vs captured-on-FCP-iMac

Hi all,

I'm a newbie here and a rookie in videography. Still have lots to catch up, actually.

Well, I'm confused about something. I'm shooting with Sony FX-1 DV Pal Anamorphic setting. I capture the footage using Final Cut Pro on iMac via the built-in firewire.

Then I connect my FX-1 to my friend's 40" plasma TV to one of the AV port and my iMac to another. This is just to compare the picture quality. It seems that the picture from my iMac (Final Cut Pro) is more blurry than the one directly from FX-1.

Is this to be expected? Is this normal? Is there a way for me to improve the quality of my final render (I plan to make it into a DVD).

Thanks all for helping and replying.

How are you connecting the camera and iMac? Composite video? If so, the quality loss is to be expected. Computer graphic cards aren't optimized for TVs. Try outputting the video from the iMac to the camera over firewire, then from the camera into the TV. The quality will likely be better.

Shane's Stock Answer #2: Blurry playback

Courtesy of Shane Ross's Little Frog in High Def: SHANE'S STOCK ANSWERS-THE COMPLETE LIST

Quote:

Shane's Stock Answer #2: Blurry playback

ONLY JUDGE THE QUALITY OF YOUR MATERIAL ON AN EXTERNAL BROADCAST 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).

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 broadcast monitor routed thru your camera or deck.

This issue comes up very often and what Shane says is true not just for judging the quality, but is even truer for judging colour. The only way to judge colour acuratly is through a calibrated broadcast monitor, a calibrated LCD computer monitor via the MXO or a calibrated LCD TV via the MXO2.

Edward:
I'm connecting my iMac through firewire 400 and my camera FX-1 with the composite video cable.

Mike:
I did make sure everything is rendered and I'm not viewing this through the Canvas, but through external 40" plasma TV. I understand there will be problem with color accuracy, but that's not my goal here (at least not yet). I'm more concern about the sharpness of the video.

The other thing I try also, is to create DVD out of my footage (I used Compressor with the best DVD setting available there). And when I compare the DVD (played on a Samsung DVD player) and the one directly from my FX-1 (through composit video), I got the same result: the DVD quality is more blurry than my FX-1.

I'm more confused than ever. Thanks to Edward and Mike for helping.

You are not comparing the same signals if I interpret the monitor hook-up correctly.

Record the edited footage back to the FX-1 on tape and play the tape on the monitor. That should look exactly the same as the original footage. If it doesn't, you might have FCP set up incorrectly. Is there a bright green line over the video on the timeline? Make sure the sequence is DV-PAL anamorphic.

Does the AV port on an iMac have interlaced output or is it displaying the deinterlaced video from the canvas?