loss of resolution when rotating image in FCP 5

g5, FCP 5.1.4, DSR-11


Trying to rotate green screen interviews using wireframe. Every time I rotate the images even slightly off access I lose resolution (the image becomes blurry), but it doesn't require any rendering. There are no filters applied or anything. Why would this happen only on green screen shots? Why would this happen at all?

Playback and render are at Dynamic and Full respectively. Trashed prefs. What else?

Real-time playback of effects always look like crap. Render them first.


www.derekmok.com

There is no rendering required. There is no orange or green line above the timeline. That's what confuses me. It's blurry without reason.

Your canvas plays a whole lot of tricks to show you the timeline. When you rotate a picture the tricks can fall apart a little bit. The same thing happens when you render for playback. Everybody always complains the "picture got fuzzy." No, the computer stopped paying attention to you and started paying attention to the show transmission to tape or other external destination. It can't do both.

The only way to make sure you're watching what you think you got is on an external television monitor.

All that and just the act of rotation means the machine has to guess at a lot of new pixels in real time. It's not like rotating a magazine you're reading on the bus going to work. It's like planting an entire flower bed in perfect rows and then deciding to change the alignment of the rows by a couple of degrees. You end up with half-begonias and split roses.

Doing this with a green screen shoot is, in my opinion, wildly unfortunate unless you're working in uncompressed 4:2:2--and even then.... Green screen shots are iffy even if you do everything perfectly.

Koz

That makes a lot of sense. However, I am watching on an NTSC and it still looks blurry which is contrary to everything else in FCP. I've rotated images in the past without loss of resolution, I just don't understand why it's doing this now.

IT's very unnerving.

<<<I am watching on an NTSC and it still looks blurry>>>

Did you also zoom or otherwise change dimensions of the image?

Koz

Did you at least try rendering?

Just do it and check back. If it's still blurry, then we can move on.


www.derekmok.com

No. I know that you lose a little when you zoom, but all I did was grab the corner of the image in wireframe mode and turn it slightly to match a previous shot. I've realized that it's not just green screen either, it's all images.


And, yes, derek I rendered just for kicks, but no diff.

Hi Christoph,

Check to see if the CENTER changed in the clips. Go into one of the clips in the timeline. Go to MOTION tab, see if the 2nd digit in the CENTER tab is "0" or "1". - adjust between the two and see if one is better.

Best,

Marc

center is at "0"

tried changing it to "1" but it didn't make a difference...I'm beginning to think there's a ghost in my machine...just have never had an issue with this before...

could it be the 5.1.4 update?

Christof, if you are not getting a green or orange line, you must be getting the olive-grey FULL quality render bar.

FCP *thinks* it can play your effect back at full quality.
it is wrong.
i have noticed this a lot with DV footage.

under Sequence Menu > Render Selection, tick the grey "full" setting, and render your effect.


hope that helps,
nick

What Nick says. Otherwise, the only thing I can think of is possibly Frame Blending, default, ON, in Time Scaling, in the Motion tab, which adds a blur. Check for that.

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Nick-

Good call. That seems to have done it. There's no way to override this? It's very disconcerting.
Thank you.

Christoph

That's the nature of "real-time playback". That's why I kept saying "render, render". Yes, it can play the effect, but it looks so awful that it doesn't tell you whether the effect works.


www.derekmok.com

override it?
what do you mean?

it needs rendering, so you render it.
or you understand that it's a preview only while you work,
then before you finish, you render all.
i always tick the "full" quality setting in the "Render All" menu


nick