Strange, blurry NTSC

I haven't shot with NTSC in many months but recently did for an event. (HVX200 P2, 60i). In FCP the image plays very blurry, sort of like mosquito noise. But when stopped on a still frame it looks crystal clear. Same on my monitor. Very similar to what HDV looks like on a timeline.

What is causing this? I checked the seq setting and clip settings, everything appears correct. I have upgraded to 6.0.6 and OS 10.4.11 since last time I used NTSC. Did apple change something? Clips look fine in QT but inspector shows 640x480. FCP imports as 720x480 so something strange going on there. I appreciate any help with this.

thanks,
tom

Well, it sure sounds like you need to render. What happens if you do a 'full' render? Render > Both > Full. And if that fixes it, then there is a mismatch somewhere, even though it seem ok. Can you list exactly what it says for the seq and clip settings?

Thanks Jude for the response. Since the OP I have exported one of the clips to quicktime movie using "current settings" and it comes out 720x480 and looks acceptable. Also exported using DV NTSC 48Khz and again looks fine. I may have lost some quality though in the import-export process. Here are the settings.

seq: 720x480, NTSC DV3:2 NTSC - CCIR 601, lower, DV/DVCPRO
clip: 720x480, 29.97, DV/DVCPRO, 3.6MB sec, alpha none, NTSC - CCIR 601.

thanks,
Tom

Coming late to this but I figured oh, why not add my .02?

This has all the earmarks of "Dynamic" playback-- a timeline playback setting available by default from the popup above the timeline patch panel. IOW, your machine can't do full quality realtime DVCPro 50 SD bandwidth and the QuickTime engine is scaling back to half quality or even less to maintain realtime and probably "greenline" playback.

If so, go to the popup and test this by explicitly choosing Full Quality and see if a red renderline appears in the ruler, which will prove Jude's theory. The fact that your frame size seq settings match and you're able to export a full quality clip helps narrow the issue to this "dynamic" possibility.

I always turn it to Full Quality.

WHOOPS-- maybe they DON'T match-- you've indicated CCIR 601, which is actually 720 X 486 1.48:1), yet your camera clip and sequence are 720 X 480. You might want to doublecheck your sequence settings and adjust accordingly to DV NTSC (1.5:1, or 3:2), which should match your source and run realtime full quality on a Mac Pro and maybe a Pro laptop.. but I would still make that Full Quality explicit from the popup or QT may try to scale it.

Okay, my .04...

- Loren

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