NLE Mac / Final Cut questions from 2003

[Mike Bluestone]

I have been experimenting rendering small clips from
after affects 5.5 in different formats and different
compression settings, as quicktime movies. Some
settings seem to give me very jerky playback in
quicktime.
for example photo jpeg @ 75% is ok but @
89% it is jerky and @ 100% its ok. Motion jpeg b @100%
is jerky.
Anyone got any ideas ??

[Jeff Donald]

It sounds like convergence problems on consumer TV sets. It could also be pincushion or barrel distortion. These should be minimized on professional or broadcast production monitors.

[Jeff Donald]

I don't use 6.5 too often and when I do it's on a clients machine. I'll look into it Monday. You might also want to try the Adobe site, they have a Premiere forum.

[Jeff Donald]

No, not this year. I have a close colleague going and he's promised to email me any earth shattering developments.

[Jeff Donald]

I don't use the Tiffen diffusion filters, but I've heard and seen good things. What effects are you using in MB? You might just want to de interlace and adjust motion and not use the full suite.

[Jeff Donald]

The 525 lines is vertical resolution, fixed by the NTSC standard. The 700 lines refers to the horizontal resolution and is the rating of the camera head. But in most cases the signal has to go to tape and that is the limiting factor. Mini DV is rated at about 500 lines of horizontal resolution.

[Jeff Donald]

When mini DV was first announced it was claimed 100 generations without loss of quality. I think in practical terms 20 generations is a safe limit. Codecs do vary and QuickTime is one of the better Codecs. Codecs have been discussed here before and links to several sites that compare different Codecs have been posted. Use the search function and you should find many good threads on the issue of Codecs.

[Jeff Donald]

I would need to see the clips to give an accurate assessment. However, I generally use more even numbers, 50, 60, 70% etc. not 57, 77, 89%.

[Keith Loh]

Try Sorenson. It's a really nice codec.

[David Crompton]

I am not sure what any of these things are but I have witnessed this on a number of different TV's over the years. I assume then that I can expect this, to various degrees, on any TV? What about Plasma screens and projection or is the distortion caused by the tube ?

[Jeff Donald]

As we move towards digital display devices the distortion effects of analog display devices are minimized or eliminated. LCD and Plasma displays will not exhibit the types of artifacts you are referring to. Newer and more expensive analog TV sets typically do not exhibit distortion either. I use FCP and by 7 year old Sony 32 inch XBR shows very little distortion.

[Robert Knecht Schmidt]

I've found almost all SD video footage run through Magic Bullet comes out looking like mud. (If anyone has counterexamples, do pipe up!)

I'd use Magic Bullet strictly for its color correction and leave its core frame rate features alone. Especially, converting from 30p to 24p is asking for trouble.

[Zac Stein]

Roberts, seems to work really well for pal stuff.

I threw some 50i stuff into it, came out 25p and looking fantabulous, too bad the render times are just plain stupid.

Zac

[Robert Knecht Schmidt]

It seems to me that 50i -> 25p is a trivial conversion, as it's just a matter of an interpolation. There's no reason why it wouldn't look reasonably good, in Magic Bullet or just using a simple C algorithm.

DV-sourced NTSC footage comes out looking horrid when passed through Magic Bullet using the 60i -> 24p method outlined in the quick start tutorial. Which is why I implore, if anyone has footage that they've had more success bulleting, I hope they're able to share it.

[Zac Stein]

Robert, they used magic bullet on the feature "Jackass" and alot of footage looked really really good, so it must work for some people.

Zac