Mac - why does FCP look so much better than QT?

I've noticed that the same DV file renders differently in FCP than QT - here is a side by side comparison:

I don't understand - I thought FCP was built on QT architecture? Seems weird that the main video player on the mac would be such bad quality...

I exported a section de-interlaced, and it was so much better in QT - so I guess QT fouls up interlacing, at least on DV files... weird.

How does it foul up interlacing? Do you mean it's fouling up how it's deinterlacing in the player?

I believe it is common knowledge that Quicktime is terrible. Thus, it cannot be that difficult to outdo it.

Is it recompressing the video? Shouldn't that be avoided where possible? Is it blending fields or something?

Noel, it is common knowledge that your statement about QuickTime has absolutely no foundation. You just don't like Apple hard- and software and spread FUD. Wether you like it or not, Final Cut Studio and QuickTime are de facto standards in the movie industry.

Anyway: FCP uses the QuickTime Pro --framework--, and it actually activates the QT Pro features when you install it. But FCP obviously uses different encoding parameters than the QT default and probably multiple passes to enhance the picture quality.

But this is a rendering issue. They are both playing the same file, aren't they?

Maybe QT has an option to look like that crap American NTSC TV? It's common knowledge that NTSC is terrible. :-)

Looks like it's doing a sharpen on the image?

Sharpening can't fix the pattern on the blue shirt's sleeve in the bottom-left corner like the FCP quality shows. Or the hair on the guy's arm on the right. Or the Guinness text. FCP might use parts of QT to read the movie in, but then use it's own technique to show it in full quality, or QT might just have bug.

My wild guess is that FCP is able to render both fields, whereas QT takes one field and blurs it all together to render one frame. I've always hated interlaced video anyway, I think it's a horrible idea. I can't wait til all TV and video is progressive.

It was actually a great idea in its day, overcoming bandwidth and CRT refresh rate limitations, significantly improving picture quality for analogue TV transmissions. It is a bit of a throw back in today's world of compressed digital video though.

Anyway, can you not set the de-interlacing method used in QT?

I don¡¦t like how after a while quicktime steals your file associations. I had it set up for .mov files only but after a few months suddenly .mp3 and PNG files started opening in it by default. Whether it was in the browser or localy on the desktop. Settings has options to set which files quicktime should open, unfortunately the dialogue resets the moment you save and close and you can¡¦t get PNG to open in your preferred app.
Looking on the apple forums this is very common and there doesn¡¦t seem to be a solution ƒ¼. What a piece of junk ƒ¼. Quicktime itself isn¡¦t so bad, but I wish they wouldn¡¦t try to force you to use their crummy player. There¡¦s quicktime alternative that¡¦s a kind of hack using the original oldschool media player, which is rubbish too. Thankfully Video lan player seems to manage with most quicktime .mov files .

Just seems weird how different programs display video differently. I remember thinking, when digital video was first coming about, 'okay, it's all just 1s and 0s now - that means it's exactly the same whatever you play it on.'

Eesh too many cans of Fosters, I bet there was plenty of gas around...

Darkheart

And piss.

Oddly, I quite like fosters despite its flaws.

Smells like fart on a bad day too....