Quality Loss?

[Tippsy]

If I were to capture my footage from my dvx100b to imovie and edit on there then move that to after effects to do post pro. settings and filters would there be quality loss and if so how much and why? P.S. Yes I know I could edit on After Effects but this is my question.

[Casalen]

Yes, if you use a regular codec. A so called 'lossless codec' or uncompressed footage used until the final output would make up for this, assuming imovie can use them.

[Tippsy]

where could you find one of those or what exactly is it.

[Huy Vu]

You need a professional NLE. iMovie wouldn't cut it for that since all their codec is lossy. There are many forms of lossless codecs and all professional NLE (Final Cut, Vegas, Premiere, Edius etc.) will allow you to render out in one form or another.

[Alex H.]

Since when was iMovie lossy for miniDV? Once it's on tape, it's all 1s and 0s. If you keep with DV-NTSC settings, it shouldn't ever change.

[Tommy K]

Since when was iMovie lossy for miniDV? Once it's on tape, it's all 1s and 0s. If you keep with DV-NTSC settings, it shouldn't ever change.


This is true only if you keep DV native and don't add any effects to the timeline, and don't render the video. Once you add effects/transitions and render out to another codec there will be some loss (unless it is a lossless codec). However little, there still is loss. Codec= compression/decompression. The DV codec is in the camera and rendering the video in a NLE will compress it another time with the NLE codec chosen.

[yzmotoxer807]

Yes this is the reason that extreme color correction to DV footage can look better if rendered as uncompressed 10-bit in a side by side comparison with the same color correction rendered as DV.