Viewer vs. Canvas quality

[c.cook88]

Hey guys,

Hopefully some people from the famous "GH1 Shipping Today! According to Panasonic Sales Rep" thread can help me out. I feel like all the users have formed somewhat of a brotherhood.

Anyways. I am a complete hobbyist and appreciate any help I can get. Unfortunately I'll need explanations that would be relevant to a 5 year old.

I am using final cut express to import video from the gh1 using the AVCHD codec 1920x1080i60. The quality looks out of this godamn world in the viewer, but seems to lose a tad bit of quality when the clip is dragged onto the timeline and viewed in the canvas. I'm talking a complete subtle amount of loss, but loss non the less!

I've read a number of possible problems relating to this i.e. raw footage in viewer vs. compressed in canvas, canvas rt playback settings, external monitor.... all of which have been addressed, but nothing seems to help?

Any ideas?

"may you all have a gh1 asap... the thing is a beast :)"

[Ben_B]

In the top left corner of the timeline window there should be a little tabby button called RT or something. Click it and change quality from Dynamic or whatever it is on to High.

[c.cook88]

thanks... ive tried that but it doesnt seem to help... the smoothness of the motion is even noticeable....

[dvbrother]

Dumb question, but is your canvas displaying the image at 100%? If not, Final Cut is interpolating the image which can make it look soft. Set your Canvas to display the image at 50% or 100% and it should display cleanly.

[c.cook88]

No question is too dumb for me! I've been told that canvas quality is never going to look at good as viewer quality because of real time playback and encoding. I've output footage in h.264 and the resulting file looks fantastic... thanks for all your help!

Maybe you could help me get this g*^*&^ 1.1 firmware installed! See my other thread for the painful details!