"Mosquito Noise"/ still image problems in timeline- I've tried everything

Hi all,

I am working on a feature that incorporates many still photographs with DV video in the timeline. Most of the stills are in jpeg or tiff formats and roughly half of the images (50 out of 100) are affected by this problem, both jpeg and tiff.

The stills are beautiful in Photoshop and other viwer apps, but when I lay my stills into the FCP timeline, they become funky. They develop chunky, horizontal resolution problems, most noticeable along edges. It's a lot more broad and softer than usual jagginess or aliasing. They also grow mushy pixelated blobs that most accurately look like "mosquito noise" as found here: [www.videsignline.com]


The images look funky as soon as I lay them into the timeline, BUT appear pristine and perfect on an NTSC monitor. The funkiness carries over when I export a QT file or print to tape but only when viewing on a computer display. Again, the still images in the exported QT file or on the tape look great when viewed on an NTSC monitor, but horrible when viewed on a computer display.



I've been working on this problem for a couple days now and have tried many things:

-------------------------------------
Optimizing stills before import
- resolution, whether 300dpi or 72 dpi doesn't seem to be a factor, and resizing makes no difference. In fact, a particular image will look messed-up in the exact same way,despite and size/ resoultion manipulations I perform in PS prior to import.

Adjusting render settings (and then rendering)
- Everything to full
- Sequence settings to Safe RT

Converting sequence and stills to 8-bit uncompressed and 10-bit uncompressed

Applying filters
- Gaussian blur
- De-interlace
- Flicker

Reimporting the files, reconnecting them

Adjusting the position of the stills to maintain whole/ even postion settings in the motion tab

Increasing the still cache allotted to FCP

Changing the pixel aspect-ratio of the stills
---------------------------

The key elements seem to be that:
1) the images are natively fine and only become funky when placed into the timeline
2) the images look perfect on an NTSC monitor and horrible on a computer display. I know only a fraction of the DV stream is used to display an image in the canvas- that isn't the problem, because the poor quality carries over to output, whether QT or tape (and again, the carried-over images on the QT file or tape look great on an NTSC monitor, but horrible on a computer display.

Anybody have any ideas? Thanks.
-Jim

Dual 2.5ghz G5
Mac OS 10.3.9
FCP 5

Highly compressed JPEGs and TIFFs (using JPEG compression) will have compression artifacts - if you want to get around this - scan the photos in and do not save them as JPEG.

Save as TARGA (TGA) or Photoshop (PSD) then import into FCP.

Also how big are the images? Are they video resolution or are they smaller? they should be at least 720x480 pixels for NTSC but really for 4:3 image I would suggest 800x600 to allow a bit of room for positioning and resizing.

As you have found out dpi means absolutely nothing to a file for video. So please let us know the size in pixels (horizontal & vertical).

Lastly have you rendered the timeline?


Ben





For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Thanks for the reply, Ben.

The photos are varying sizes and resolutions and the problem affects examples from across the spectrum, both jpeg and tiff.

The photos look great outside of FCP and great in FCP when viewed on an external monitor. In other words, there are no inherent artifacts or compression problems inherently in the images. FCP is doing something to them- and it seemingly effects them without regard to resolution, size, or format.

Resizing, and adjusting format or resolution in PS does nothing to fix it.

-J

Another odd clue- it seems that the still looks funky in the canvas window until I adjust the view in the window to 100% (it sits at about 98% in its current 2-up configuration). BUT it still outputs funky, whether it looks good in the canvas or not.
-Jim

Let me get this straight...

? the image looks good on a TV/NTSC Monitor

? the image looks good on 100% scaled canvas or viewer window

? on 98% it looks crap - this is because the scaling is done on the fly and you should not rely on this to accurately judge the quality of the image.

? it looks crap outputted even if it looks good in canvas - outputted to what?


Any chance you can send us a screen grab of the problem by pressing shift-command(apple)-3 and emailing the picture.


Ben





For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

What QT format are you exporting to? Have you tried compressing it for viewing it on the web or a non-interlaced format for viewing on the computer, like Mpeg-4 or Sorensen? If you're just making a DV QT file it will still look as bad as it did in the FCP Canvas.

I'm exporting a FCP movie file- no conversion. This is a file that will be used to create a DVD and must look great on TVs, on computer displays and when projected digitally.
-Jim

Ben, you are correct on all of the above. It looks like crap when output to tape or to a QT file, regardless of the settings. I am away from my work station right now but will proviode a screen grab as soon as I can. Thanks again for your help.
-Jim

Except for this statement - >>It looks crap when output to tape<< everything else seems normal to me. You are putting the clips into a DV timeline, and therefore rendering for television. Once you do this, it no longer looks good on any computer monitor.

If you make a new sequence and make it, say, photo jpeg at 100% (sequence > settings > compressor photo jpeg) and render that, what happens?

The main problem you have is that at the end of all this you are going to be making an MPEG for the DVD, and you'll have to live with how that looks on different screens.

Computer monitors, and NTSC TVs are two very different specs.

Your comparison of them is Apples and Oranges...



Independent photographer, film maker and Producer. In the wonderful UK.