I am trying to import DV (16:9) footage captured with FCP into MC3 (Windows XP Pro). When playing the files with QT 7.3 I can see and hear the video but the picture is quite fuzzy and I see interlacing artifacts. The Movie inspector says that a DV-PAL codec was used, but it has 24.93 fps and 30.30 mbits/sec, which is NTSC. If I import it into Avid the picture looks fuzzy, too. Is there anyway I can sort out the quality? On the Mac it looked beautiful. I guess the DVCPRO NTSC codec, which is used by FCP, is already installed on my PC, otherwise QT could not show the file. Why then the bad picture quality?

If the movie plays back looking that way in QT Player then, more than likely, the file was output that way. 

How does it look when imported into MC? QuickTime has a "high quality" flag that is off by default with most DV files. This doesn't affect the import into Avid. It sounds to me like the flag is not enabled. Not sure where to change that on the PC, but on a Mac in QT Player, it's cmd-J and then look under visual settings, I believe.

- Oliver

Oops, I reread the post and see that you already said it looks bad in MC.

- Oliver

catwoman:

When playing the files with QT 7.3 ....

It is hardly recommended to use Quicktime 7.4.5 with MC3. I occurred myself some problems within MC3 using other Quicktime versions (like failed MP3 import)

pixel

That is true for the ingest into MC..doesn't explain why the QTs play back poorly in the QT player though. 

You see interlacing artifacts on what?  On a CRT or interlaced LCD pro monitor (the latter is pretty rare)? Or on a regular LCD that is by definition progressive?

"24.93 fps" would be PAL, not NTSC.

If the picture looks fuzzy, the first thing to suspect is that there is some scaling going on.

If you import PAL footage into an NTSC timeline, you get scaling. The resolution is different and the PAR (Pixel Aspect Ratio) is different.

Or it could have been done in FCP by someone "just trying to help."

Thanks for all the responses. It has been captured in Final Cut (DV PAL project), and I literally took the capture scratch qt files and imported into Avid.

I am watching the footage (in QT and Avid) on an LCD - DELL 2408WFP. Apart from the interlaced artefacts I also see compression artefacts, even though the PAR and the resolution have not been changed.

In terms of QT I don't understand: I thought MC3 is compatible with QT 7.3?

Nope, you need to be running 7.4.5.