I tried creating high definition quick time movies to play on an Apple iMac, but the output turned out to be very pixelated. Some time ago, I posted this question on the Adobe Premiere Elements forum (I am using PRE 8.0) too, but no answer other than the suggestion to post it here.
Some facts:
My camera is a Sony HDR FX1, and I am shooting in HD fomrat which is 1440 x 1080 25 fps interlaced. My project settings are PAL HDV1080i. I capture my footage using HDVSplit, so the file format that I import into PRE8 is .m2t.
As outputsettings I have created my own settings, as the two default settings available have lower resolution and quality, so I changed the settings to the full frame size of my footage (1440 x 1080) and also adjusted the frame rate to 25fps. Also I have increased the quality to 100%, but the output shows 10% quality if I may say so: very pixelated.
I have updated my graphic card (nVidia) to the most recent version, as well as Quick Time. What else could I do to improve the qualtiy of the output?
Hope someone can help me with this

Kind regards
Jan Maarten Gaasbeek

Hi Jan,
The first thing that pops out at me is the bit rate. I'm sure it needs to be in the 1500+ range.

I did a test at a bit rate of 2020.3 and it came out looking great.
I used the same type of source files.

Also you can check the box that says "Render at maximum depth".

You may need to change the aspect ratio from Square Pixels, hopefully someone can help us with that setting.

Hope that gives you a start to a good export

Hello, Jan. Welcome to Muvipix.

From the description of your workflow, I know of no reason you shouldn't get excellent results. So my first question would be, How are you judging the quality?

Are you playing the video at full-screen on your iMac? If so, you're likely playing it at a much higher resolution than it was shot -- and that could be making it look pixelated.

And what happens if you play the MOV that you've output on a PC -- and then compare it to your original footage (also played by Quicktime player) on the same PC? Side by side, is there really that much of a degradation in quality?

Can you post a screen capture of each, side by side, at the same size on your screen, both clips being played by the same media player, to this forum so that we can look at them? (It's very important that this be an apples-to-apples comparison -- not one clip played on a Mac and the other on a PC or one clip played on a TV and another on the computer>)

When we see the two clips side-by-side, we'll be better able to tell if the problem is a lack of bit-rate, as Chuck proposed, or an interlacing issue or a change in resolution.

Hello Chuck and Steve,

Thank you for attending to my question. I just rendered a quicktime version of a recent project. I have attached a screenshot of the settings I used in PRE8 as well as a screenshot of Quicktime Player on the PC on which I created the file with. I have not bothered transferring it to the iMac on which I would like to show the file, but from the past I know it looks the same there. Hope you guys can tell what went wrong.

Regards
Jan Maarten

Hi Jan,
You need to scroll down in the window and increase the Bit Rate to around 2000.
That setting does not show in your screen shot.

Thanks Chuck, that did the trick. I never realised that there were more options down in that menu

Glad you got it figured out Jan, have a great night

You can play around with the bit rate, the higher it is the larger the file will be.
So you need to figure out what is the best combination of quality and size.
If the file size at 2000 is good then you are all set, but you may need to make some changes in the future.

There are more advanced options for Quicktime files than any other format.