[MacDV] Digital Video Quality

[R B Williams]

Well stated question. I don't think you have diluted these tepid I.Q. waters at all.

You should not see a loss of quality by editing since the Mac keeps the same digital
information intact that the mini-dv sent over in the first place. Are you importing the
footage to your powerbooks' internal drive via Apple's  built in Firewire? I once ran
accross an issue with distorted video frames because of a bad Firewire bridge in an
external drive. There was crosstalk as the drive accessed. Eliminating all FW
periphrials except the dv cam solved the problem.

Now, if the loss of quality is from a DVD you burned, that is a different issue. When
the iDVD program compresses for DVD-r there are many things to cause changes in the
source material. Some can be improved, but there will always be loss.

To see if the iMovie footage is clean, play some of that out to miniDV and compare with
your original playing to TV. They should be identical.

R.B.


Charles Pearson wrote:

> Ladies and Gentlemen,
>
> That sensation that you felt was the collective IQ of this list
> dropping about 100 points when I joined. Dwayne informed me over at
> Applelinks that the fine folks over here were quite knowledgeable and
> that I may well learn a thing or two. So it's his fault that you have
> to put up with my less than brilliant questions.
>
> My question has to do with digital video quality. I use a dv camcorder
> to record the life of my family (sports, special events, kids doing
> what kids do <smile>) and I use my powerbook to make movies of this. I
> have noticed a substantial loss of quality from what the original dv
> tape looks like to what I get on the other side of iMovie. I think I am
> setting every “quality” setting to as high as possible, yet iDVD 4,
> Toast 6, and even back to dv tape seem to produce less than DVD quality
> images; especially my children’s sports where the action and my
> camcorder are moving (on a quality tripod by the way). If I watch the
> original recorded dv tape directly from the camcorder to my TV the
> images are remarkable. I have often thought, “Wow, that picture looks
> great!” Yet, once I use iMovie to well
make a movie of it, the result
> is not so “wow, that picture looks great”. I am currently using iMovie
> 4.0.1 and iDVD 4.0.1. I have importing directly into iMovie using the
> firewire import onto my 667 Powerbook with a gig of ram. Am I doing
> something wrong? Is a loss of digital quality to actually be expected?
> Can you give me some advice or direction? Thanks in advance.
>
> Chuck Pearson
> John 17:3
>
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