Wow! Bad source led to good output? Can someone please explain this?

[grahamdunn]

I was putting together a demo reel (the images shown are NOT mine, by the way, I included them for reference...). All I did was open the poorly compressed source footage (DV) and then export it from Quicktime Pro as "none" instead of choosing uncompressed or whatever. The results are way way better. How on earth is this possible? I thought your source was your source. Granted, the filesize is insane (300 megs vs. 7 gigs) but how is this possible? Anyone know? Also, why is "none" different than 8 or 10-bit uncompressed? Thanks for you help!

P.S. picture 2 is the source footage, picture 1 is the "none" version.

 

[Arson]

gamma will do anything!

 

[SeanEmer]

How did you compress your grabshot of the source footage? If the 'Picture 1' is your shot after compressing under none, then 'Picture 2' is the shot after what compression? If no compression, then how did you get the shot? Did you screengrab it directly from the preview winow in your editor? I believe a lot of video programs will give you a slightly distorted preview shot while your editing. If I'm not mistaken it has to do with the pixel aspect ratio differences between your computer monitor (square pixel) and DV NTSC (0.9 i think is what it is).

 

[grahamdunn]

I just opened the raw DV Quicktime and took a screenshot (the blurry one), then exported the movie in Quicktime pro with compression as "none" and then took a screenshot of that new Quicktime (the clearer picture). There shouldn't have been an aspect ratio compensation or anything. Weird eh?

 

[John Froton]

The source screenshot was probably from interlaced video (showing only half of the scan lines at a frozen moment) and the output shot probably looks better because the processing into a new QuickTime clip most likely deinterlaced it into a progressive video (showing all scan lines at a frozen moment)