using stills in sequence

I've scanned in photos and have saved them as JPGs at 300dpi. When I edit them into a sequence something wierd happens. They are crisp when the frame is still but become slightly blurry when image is playing. Why?


*Bec

FCP plays everything slightly lo-res in the canvas.

especialy if it needs rendering.

the only way to see the full quality is by monitoring on an external TV type monitor.

nick

Also it's better to work with video's native 72dpi if you don't need to zoom or pan the images.

Yes there are a good many shortcuts that are taken to make the canvas work. Some of them don't look so hot. The video processes will always default to making the output video look as good as possible sometimes making the canvas look pretty ratty.

You need to connect a "real" television monitor (not a TV) to the machine to actually see what you're doing.

This process many times doubles the cost of the mac, so it's a step only the Really Serious people take.

Koz

First of all, using a 300DPI image is probably overkill. You should clean the image and photoshop and make the frame size 2 or 3 times the size of DV if you want to do moves. If you have a frame size that big, 72 DPI is usually all you need unless you want to start zooming out of someone's nostrils. You'll get a lot more RT with a lower DPI rating too. 72 DPI is the target for all raster graphics: TV, web, etc. Most people totally overkill image size and DPI. The only way to really optimize the scan is to use Scan Guide Pro from Neotron, so you can scan correctly from the get go. The DPI and frame size are then altered in Photoshop.

You really need to look at your stills in a video monitor, not the Canvas. I really think that all people should use a video monitor, not just the rich and famous. A TV set will do in a pinch but is not quite as good. Most people wrongly do not monitor their output. If they did, we'd see a lot fewer of these posts - which are very common.

This gets by a lot of people: you have to render out your stills at Full Quality. Make sure in the Sequence>Render menus, the dark green FULL bar is checked.

Also monitor your video in Safe RT and at Full Frame Rate and High Quality.

Last but not least, if you scanned your images, JPEG is the LAST choice you should make, since it is a lossy format. Much better to use PICT. One should only use JPEG if the images are coming raw from a digital still camera. Otherwise: PICT, PSD OR TIFF are the best choices.

Please check out my book, "Effects and Motion Graphics in Final Cut Pro". Many of these issues are discussed in detail.

Kevin Monahan