Footage is blocky, edges are jagged and not smooth

psheff · Joined: 04 Jul 2005 Posts: 13

Hello,

Tyan Tempest i5000XT (S2696)
Dual Intel Xeon Quad-Core E5430 2.66GHz 1333MHz 12MB CPUs
12GB DDR2-667 FBDIMM RAM (4x1GB)
ATI Radeon HD3870 512MB DDR4 2DVI/HDCP PCI-Express Video Card
Vista Ultimate x64
Premiere CS4

Alright, I had my system up and running two weeks ago with no problem, and the system drive up and quit. I reinstall everything from scratch on a new drive and now my program monitor shows my footage as slightly blocky on the edges, not smooth at all. The footage itself is crisp and clean through wmp or other, and the exported files all look fine.

Any thoughts why it would have worked two weeks ago and not today?

I uninstalled and reinstalled my gfx card drivers, updated windows, and the 4.1 tools twice.

Any thoughts?

Phill

BBiTedu · Joined: 04 Jul 2005 Posts: 729

this is caused by a setting in adobe premiere, the program monitor will automatically change the quality for performance enhancement.

two options might currently be causing this:
You Adobe settings use Adobe for preview instead of the Matrox program monitor (project/general preferences) or you have to right click the program monitor and select quality instead of performance/automatic.

You might have to search a bit for the correct options as I don't have CS4 at my current disposal but maybe someone who does can give you the exact location.

Matrox_Support_Matthew · Joined: 04 Jul 2005 Posts: 1215

Hi Phil,

The setting BBiTedu might be referring to is found under Edit>Preferences>Player Settings. I have yet to see this have a difference on the output, but I suggest you stick to Adobe player as we've encountered some issues with the Matrox player.

Could you be editing in an HDV project and under Sequence>Sequence Settings>Playback Settings>Video Output> you have the output format set to NTSC? If so this will downscale your timeline and output as NTSC instead of HDV and you will undoubtedly have some quality loss.

Thanks for the help BBiTedu!

Regards,
Matthew

psheff · Joined: 04 Jul 2005 Posts: 13

Ah, unfortunately these solutions are not what I'm looking for...though it would seem that way.

No, it looks like I am in permanent draft quality mode even when I am not. Not only that, but edges seem jagged and almost interlaced, blocky. Almost like I am looking at footage that has been compressed with JPEG.

What I find puzzling is that just 3 weeks ago on the same system, same software, these did not occur. Bad install of Matrox tools?

Is there a way to completely remove them from my system and re-install?

Matrox_Support_Matthew · Joined: 04 Jul 2005 Posts: 1215

Hi Phil,

Is the image jagged or blocky out the breakout box or is this only in the Premiere Program window?

Is there a difference if you click on the Program window, then go to Edit>Preferences>Player Settings and switch between Adobe and Matrox player?

What if you go to Sequence>Sequence Settings>Playback Settings button>General tab>change the scrubbing mode between Frame, 1st field, and 2nd field?

Make sure you're set to Highest quality and not automatic.

Regards,
Matthew