TV playback versus Pc playback

B

basmntdweller

Guest
I have a Canon ZR85 camcorder. I have taken several videos and while playback via the video out cord to my TV is pretty good, the quality when I download to my PC via firewire is very poor. As best I can tell I am DLing at max resolution and saving at max. I am using Pinnacle Studio 9 for editing and the capture monitor reports no frames lost.
Is this just the nature of digital video or am I missing something. I really don't want to buy a higher quality camcorder when the playback quality on the tv is very good. If I could get that quality on the PC I'd be thrilled.
Thanks,,,Matt
 
Hi Matt and welcome to the forum :hiya:

This is a common 'problem' that a fair few people have reported in the past. But in reallity it is normally not a problem at all, the reason being that a PC monitor is just not designed to display 'true colour' video the same way as a TV. The monitor is designed for higher resolution with limited colours.
To confirm that this is the case I suggest you output the captured footage to DVD/VHS/camcorder and then play it on a TV. If the quality is still bad then you do have a problem, but if it looks good on the TV you now know why.

Hope this helps,
Mark.
 
Thanks for the reply Mark.
My only real reason for the camcorder is net based videos. Is there a better approach? A friend has a Canon GL2 which does excellent videos on the pc but they are very large files. I would even live with the large file size but at the moment I can't justify the cost of the GL2 not to mention I don't have the money in the first place :D
I will test the transfer back to tape and replay it on the tube later.

Matt
 
Well a lot in terms of PQ will depend on how you transfer the video to the PC. Firewire or USB? USB will be low quality but firewire gives near enough 100% quality as long as the files are sdaved as .AVI which are large. You can then convert them for whatever use you want to reduce the size.

Mark.
 

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