[ink] Video quality poor

atom_b · Post by **atom_b** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 9:24 am

When I load video into a Live 6 set it renders with large artefacts, wich makes it, friendly spoken, unviewable on higher resolutions in full screen mode or an external screen.

I tried for several methods, compressed and uncompressed, I checked the quality externally, ok, but when I load the according .mov-file into a Live 6 set the quality is, least to say, poor, very poor, very 90ies streaming like poor.

Am I missing something here, or is this intended?
If so I cannot get the point in having sort of video in Live 6 that looks like 1998 RealMedia streaming - and I would have to switch back to use MTC to control video externally

Besides: Apart from its nice synching capabilities I didn't get the point in being restricted to QuickTime.

Can anyone clarify this?

Regards
BV

ingo · Post by **ingo** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 4:21 pm

Several questions concerning your video setup.

Did you check the video quality with the quicktime player ?
Live uses the quicktime libraries so the quality in live should not be any
different from the quicktime viewer.

If you find any additional artifacts, could you tell what kind of
artifacts you see (compression, low resolution blown up to fullscreen,
not playing smooth for performance reason ...).

thanks, ingo

atom_b · Post by **atom_b** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 4:49 pm

Hello Ingo,

Thank you for your reply. I am currently travelling, so I can't re-check on all this, I will do so, when I am back on Sunday.

However, what I did so far:
- I cross checked with the quality in Quicktime, where everything is displayed the way it should. (Quicktime Pro 7)
- The artefacts I see when displaying it in Live 6 are like with very poorly (at very low bit rates) compressed video.
- The poor quality is visible (actually it jumps to your attention) when displaying at the original ratio as well as in full screen mode.

It is good to know, that it should display as well as in Quicktime player, so I only have to find the reason why it doesn't do so.
As I said, I can't check now, but could it be there's something wrong with Live 6 accessing the same libraries as Quicktime itself?

And just because I would like to know. Is there any special reason to be restricted to Quicktime format in Live?

Regards
Boris

ingo · Post by **ingo** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 5:18 pm

Hi, Boris,

atom_b wrote: As I said, I can't check now, but could it be there's something wrong with Live 6 accessing the same libraries as Quicktime itself?

I'd guess too.
You might send me a live pack containing your preference folder,
which also contains the information about the quicktime library version used by live.
The live pack can be created by holding the SHIFT key and
clicking on the 'support' item in the 'help' menu.

atom_b wrote: And just because I would like to know. Is there any special reason to be restricted to Quicktime format in Live?

Well, yes, it is less programming, support and maintanance for us,
with a fairly good range of supported video formats :)

Regards,

Ingo

atom_b · Post by **atom_b** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 9:00 am

Hello Ingo,

I solved the problem for my part, but an minor issue with Live 6 somehow seems to remain from what I can see.

- encoded the same clip with identical methods to .mov
- imported into Live 6 arrangement -> video is displayed flawless

So finally I get a new video displayed in Live 6 in exactly the same quality as within QuickTime Player.

To check if the the old .mov from the the same clip displayed well now

- loaded old .mov into Live 6 -> video is showing the flaws seen before

I tried out two things to work around this, supposing Live 6 might be caching

- removed .asd from .mov -> no avail
- renamed .mov -> no avail

Finally I checked again to compare the quality of the two .mov files in QuickTime Player -> both are displayed flawless

So this leaves me a bit clueless about what is happening there, though for my part this seems to be solved.

Live 6 is doing something strange here, when it comes to displaying this one .mov it once had loaded with inferior quality.

Is there any caching going on, which might have tripped me?
Did the .alp I sent you tell something new?

Regards
Boris

ingo · Post by **ingo** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 9:17 am

hello, boris,

live uses the quicktime libraries 6.5.2 so there seems to be
the remains of an old quicktime installation.
This does explain why what you see in the player is different
from what is displayed in live.
Why the newly encoded video shows flawless, i dont know.
May be it was previously encoded with a different quicktime version ?

regards, ingo

atom_b · Post by **atom_b** » Mon Oct 16, 2006 10:51 am

ingo wrote: Why the newly encoded video shows flawless, i dont know.
May be it was previously encoded with a different quicktime version ?

I've been using the same version of QuickTime throughout encoding those videos, and I have been using TMPGEnc in parallel (which uses which libraries? I don't know) to crosscheck, which made no difference. Both older versions of the .mov had these flaws.

However I will now try to get rid of the old QuickTime remains. That's why I always avoided using QT, that its lack of ability to clean up behind itself properly with an uninstall or to not pass the new libraries to everyone with a reinstall. Argh...

Regards
Boris