horrible lose of quality

U

urbanfx

Active member
hi everyone,
im editing a 29,97 dv footage ( 3d renderings ) on a 30i timeline in avid.

when i try to export as quicktime or tga sequence ... whatever, none compression, millions of collors blah blah blah.... the export just starts looking washed out, edges become pixelrated <<<

idk wich fields to output lower,upper,single?

what could be the best possibly quality settings to export the clips
( i must continue to work in fusion afterwards )

any hints would highly be appreciated!
thx in advance
 
Try a TIFF sequence and make sure yo set the color space to RGB rather than 601. That will expand the scale from 16-235 to 0-255.
 
thx micheal,

did that, but sadly no difference

i have a lot of 3d building renderings that when I preview it in a quicktime player before importing they look beautifull,

allready in the timeline they look horrible

when I export them they look a little better, but still a big lose of quality
ive tried until now pretty much every format possible.. im clueless

the original footage is dv,dvd format ( 720x480 )
does that have anything to do with it?
 
I am not quite clear what you are doing...

If the original footage is NOT DV encoded, it will be re-encoded to DV in order to play in the timeline. This can make CG elements look terrible because their perfect lines and gradients do not always compress well at all.
 
i just noticed,
first of all the footage is 720x480 with some YUV422 codec...
I cant find the codec anywhere, but I can play it back ( some parts do appear green tough )

allready when I import it to avid, just set an i/o and I output as absolutly uncompressed quicktime or tiff sequence.... whatever, i got a horrible lose of quality..
but i guess its the codec

any solution to extract it, make it uncompressed and import it to xpress?
 
You may be able to use an uncompressed timeline in Avid, depends on the system. Do you need to take it into Avid at all? Are you simply using avid to perform the conversion so that Fusion can recognise the footage??
 
yeah i must import it to avid, only way to cut the clips for me, i dont have any other editing pack, how would I do an absolute uncompressed timeline in avid?

i wanted to edit the couple of clips in avid, send it over to fusion, make some text anim. and thats pretty much it, its not even anything fancy, just i/o.. pretty much no effects inside avid

am I forced to get mojo or is this somehow just another "unlucky" day for me,
the edges keep ****ing up.. horrible, what absolutly makes no sense for me.. since i tought uncompressed = uncompressed, I guess today the rules changed :(
 
Uncompressed is not uncompressed if it comes from a DV compressed timeline though - that could well be it. Are the edges jagged where two different colours meet? If so it is likely to be the 4:1:1 colour sampling of DV.

I haven't used Avid for years I am afraid, and I am very ropey now (hey, I am in the wrong thread, I know) but your version may not support uncompressed timelines, basic versions won't (one reason I prefer FCP a billion times more!).

If you have no way to edit anything but DV, it would be better to compress the original footage out as DV from the 3D program. Although this won't be perfect, it will still prevent one of the stages of compression as your Avid will be able to edit it without recompressing.

If you version of Avid only supports the DV codec, there isn't much you can do about it (if it is the DV codec causing the problem! It is hard for me to confirm that from 3,000 miles away!). Take a look at you timeline settings and see what other options you have.

When you said this "the original footage is dv,dvd format ( 720x480 )" what did you mean? I thought you were rendering out of the 3D program in a 4:2:2 codec. Also what is dv,dvd format??

I have to go to bed now I'm afraid. Hopefully someone else can pick this up ... someone who knows Avid better than me!! Night :)
 
no i got some clips from some company in europe ( im not in direct contact with them sadly ), they wanted a demoreel cut and im doing the rawcut.

the footage I got from them are just 3d animations, so a lot of edges ( buildings )
they are all quicktime files,

if I open quicktime movie info, I see it has a codec called "YUV422 codec"
the files are all 720x480 (recognized inside quicktime as dv/dvd
whatever that is ) I never knew there is another format that is 6 pixels shorter then normal ntsc.

the edges become horribly jagged as soon as I import them into avid,
the output gets a little better by maybe 10% > avid timeline

still worlds appart from the original footage... im clueless :( despressed & desperate..
its been now 9 hours im trying to find out a solution.... this just simple f!@#$% sucks
 
Okay, I am still up.

I am not sure what the codec is then, YUV4:2:2 just sounds like the colour information for the codec. It certainly isn't DV anyway. Can you find the bitrate of the footage, that may help. If not, you can work it out by dividing file size by run time. It may be DVCPRO50 which runs at 50Mbits (NOT Mbytes) and is 4:2:2

Can you change your Avid timeline to use a different codec. It will be in a timeline settings menu or something similar. If you can identify the codec of the footage and make your timeline use the same codec, you shouldn't loose any quality, but that might not be possible. I am not sure what versions of Avid will handle DVCPRO 50 though (if any at all).
 
An Avid mod.... Please help Michael... as you can see, my knowledge of Avid is very rusty...

Does what I said made sense? What other timeline options should there be in different versions of avid??
 
Is everything rendered before making the Quicktime? Are you making a QUicktime reference? Are you rednering everything to DV25 and not 10:1s? (check media creation settings). Does everything look like crap or just certain sections? If just certain sections, what do those have in common?

Can you post a TIFF file of an export as an example?

Michael
 
Ok, first of all, which version of Avid do you have?

In any case, when importing, look for the "Video Resolution" drop down menu in the open dialogue window. There, select the DV 50 OMF. That will double the bandwidth Avid re-encodes the clip at, and chances are that your clips won't look as jagged anymore. That's as high as you can go without Mojo, unfortunately. Also, check that the field order of the clips is correct, if there is any (under the Options button). If it's rendered 3D, I'd expect the clips to be progressive, but who knows, maybe they went through "saving you some trouble interlacing it".

I personally find the re-encoding mechanism both the strongest and weakest point in Avid. I love that it's much faster to work with the footage when it's all encoded with the native codec, but importing footage colour corrected outside of Avid or things like CG makes me pull my hair.
 
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