Really Frustrated with FCP 3 Compression

[CodyBrown]

This is really driving me crazy. I had a yuge shoot the other day and everything went really well, after the shoot I went downstairs and played the footage on a really big television straight off the DVX (I connected using the yellow red and white cables ) and the footage was jaw-dropping, just gorgeous the way it caught the light and the colors.

After that, I went up to my powermac and started loading the footage, it was really depressing. Everything was looking flat and digitized. And for some reason (this is a problem I have scene before) it couldn't handle bright reds, it would blur them and pixelate them, driving me crazy in the process.

I shot in 24P normal mode with most of the standard settings.

How do you guys handle compression? I have seen a lot of the work on here and it seems that you have had better luck, especially considering that many of you edit on FCP. (although FCP 3 is a few years old now)

Any help would be hugely appreciated!

Thanks!

-cody

 

[Scottdvx100]

FCP's not doing any compression. The images are compressed to DV format before it's recorded to tape. That DV info is copied to FCP on capture.
DV is compressed 5 to 1 and has 4:1:1 color sampling which will cause stairstepping at times.
You're also lookign at it o na computer monitor. This has different color calibration than a standard TV and has no-interlacing.
Some DV codecs add slight filtering (blurring) but then you run into the problem when you duplicate the image.

You're best bet is to hook up a DV camera and pipe output through the DV camera or deck to a TV or monitor so you can see the final results.