A long-time cross-platform question... at DVinfo.net

James David Walley · November 19th, 2007, 04:50 PM

I've been running a networked Mac/PC system for a number of years, and there's one issue I've never had resolved.

I do most of my editing on the Mac side with FCP. I'd like to be able to take the footage over the the PC side for some additional processing but, when I export the FCP edits as a Quicktime or AVI using the Mac's native DV/DVCPRO - NTSC codec, the results on the PC side are awful-looking. Even if exported at maximum quality, the footage comes across on the PC side as blurry and low-res.

Is this the result of some sort of incompatibility between Apple's and Microsoft's DV codecs? Is there any way around this while remaining in the DV codec? If not, what would be the best codec to use while transferring? (I'm currently using Photo-JPEG.) Or is it just something I'm doing wrong?

I guess I'm still puzzled why a DV-codec Quicktime or AVI from the Mac won't work well on the PC...

John Miller · November 19th, 2007, 04:53 PM

IIRC, the QT DV codec encodes at half-resolution by default. Somewhere in the QT settings you can change it.

James David Walley · November 19th, 2007, 06:59 PM

O.K., this is fairly weird...the encoding isn't the problem - I'm already doing it at highest quality. There is a switch in the Quicktime Player preferences for using "high quality movie mode" -- when I select it on the Mac player, the results are great. However, when I do the same with the PC's QT Player, I only get the upper left quarter of the image displaying, with black covering the rest of the frame. Granted, that upper left corner is in high quality, but somehow that's not what I expected...

November 19th, 2007, 04:50 PM	#1
James David Walley New Boot Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Maple Valley, Washington Posts: 16	A long-time cross-platform question... I've been running a networked Mac/PC system for a number of years, and there's one issue I've never had resolved. I do most of my editing on the Mac side with FCP. I'd like to be able to take the footage over the the PC side for some additional processing but, when I export the FCP edits as a Quicktime or AVI using the Mac's native DV/DVCPRO - NTSC codec, the results on the PC side are awful-looking. Even if exported at maximum quality, the footage comes across on the PC side as blurry and low-res. Is this the result of some sort of incompatibility between Apple's and Microsoft's DV codecs? Is there any way around this while remaining in the DV codec? If not, what would be the best codec to use while transferring? (I'm currently using Photo-JPEG.) Or is it just something I'm doing wrong? I guess I'm still puzzled why a DV-codec Quicktime or AVI from the Mac won't work well on the PC...

November 19th, 2007, 04:53 PM	#2
John Miller Major Player Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: Hillsborough, NC, USA Posts: 968	IIRC, the QT DV codec encodes at half-resolution by default. Somewhere in the QT settings you can change it.

November 19th, 2007, 06:59 PM	#3
James David Walley New Boot Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Maple Valley, Washington Posts: 16	O.K., this is fairly weird...the encoding isn't the problem - I'm already doing it at highest quality. There is a switch in the Quicktime Player preferences for using "high quality movie mode" -- when I select it on the Mac player, the results are great. However, when I do the same with the PC's QT Player, I only get the upper left quarter of the image displaying, with black covering the rest of the frame. Granted, that upper left corner is in high quality, but somehow that's not what I expected...