Confused w/ pixels and video quality on Mac

Videogame4 · Post by **Videogame4** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 7:45 pm

I've run into this a few times. I make a video on FCP3, make it into a FCP3 movie file, then put it directly onto a DVD. When I play it on my laptop, it looks clear and fine. Playing it in a DVD player, however, it seems a lot more pixelled and not as high a quality. Is there a step I'm skipping or something I could do to improve the quality, both when putting it on a DVD or when making it into an internet file?

badmartialarts · Post by **badmartialarts** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 10:21 pm

See if the export settings have a bitrate that you can increase. That's all I can think of to improve picture quality.

gangstaj8 · Post by **gangstaj8** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 3:10 am

Forgive my naivity of FCP3's abilities, but shouldn't the DVD be in MPEG2 format in order to play on most standard DVD players?

Videogame4 · Post by **Videogame4** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 10:06 pm

This may be my own naive thoughts at work. I export it as a FCP3 movie, then drag and drop it into iDVD. I know I'm probably missing a few steps. If it needs to be converted, any good Mac converters?

badmartialarts · Post by **badmartialarts** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 10:44 pm

iDVD converts from Quicktime to MPEG2. So no big deal there, but you'll have to give it the highest quality possible .qm movie from FCP. See if it will export a Planar RGB QT movie.

Videogame4 · Post by **Videogame4** » Sun Mar 05, 2006 6:36 pm

Alright. I'll be messin' around with that probably tomorrow. Far too much of a headache to stare intensely at a screen for a few hours. One last question (and thanks again for the help thus far) what would be a good conversion program to use with a Mac to put these online?

Shazzy · Post by **Shazzy** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 3:59 pm

Just use FCP's built-in Quicktime conversion (for online distribution of your vid). You can export to a Quicktime MOV or AVI using a variety of codecs (H.263, H.264, Sorenson Video 3, 3ivx, Xvid, etc.) or DivX (if you have Divx Pro).

PM me if you still have questions. I've had to do the FCP conversion runaround too many times