It's just a gradient...

So the client wants a gradient with some text animating over the top for a menu. I get out good old Photoshop and whip up a three step gradient and then make some text in LiveType. I move it into FCP5 on a sequence that is set with a Field Dominance of "None" and the Compressor set to "Animation". I Render it. Looks good. I export it as a self contained movie. Looks good. I send it through compressor. I need a doggy bag. I play with the settings. No Luck. I import the QuickTime into DSP4 and see if I can fair any better compressing it there. Nope. I use the QuickTime Mepg plugin and again no dice. I tinker for hours. Checking boxes and changing settings hoping that if I make that change just one more time it will magically work unlike the last 400 times I compressed it with the same settings.

So after a certain amount of time staring at the screen I start thinking maybe it isn't so bad. Maybe this is my destiny. Maybe the client wont be mad. Then my little girl asks me if she can watch a Barbie DVD. The whole title sequence is a gradient. It's beautiful. Mine sucks. She looks up and asks why is Daddy crying. Daddy's crying because he's a loser sweetie. He's been working for 48 hours on this project with only 6 hours of sleep. And it still sucks.

Help ... please ... My deadline is 3pm today. I know it has to be possible. Barbie did it. And after all, It's just a gradient.

Much love,
The Dave

Have you tried just putting the self-contained, full-quality QuickTime movie of the background file onto the DVD Studio Pro menu itself, bypassing Compressor and the MPEG-2 export? DVDSP is perfectly capable of doing the MPEG-2 conversion itself; maybe you'll get different results. Also, what are your encoding settings for the DVD?

Yes I have let DSP render the file. The result is still the same. The gradient is broken up into bands of color.

For compression settings (using Compressor 2) I've done:
1 pass vbr with a bit rate of 5 - 7.5 and 6 - 8.5 and everything inbetween.
2 pass vbr with a bunch of mbps like above.
I've also tried each one of the above with the differnt motion quality controls (good, better, best)
I've even messed with the GOP structure to be Closed IP with a size of 6.

I put some pictures up online if you want to look. I think I need a second opinion because things are starting to look "good enough" again.

Here is a png of my self contained quicktime movie with animation as the compressor.

[www.yagood.com]

Here is the best looking mpeg I've managed to get.

[www.yagood.com]

Cast your vote and let me know If I should burn the disc or keep trying.

Much love,
The Dave

maybe I'm too late for you, but did you try another source for the gradient? for example, instead of making it in PS, make it in the FCP generator to see what the output is like? then just use some simp,le titles in FCP. not fancy, but when your back against it...

also, no self-contained movies, but rather reference movies might be better. that way it only gets one final render.

this sounds to me like it's getting compressed a few times down the line, and losing it along the way.

best of luck,

hd

It is too late now but that doesn't stop me from wanting to know what happened. I did try saving it as a referenced movie instead of a self contained one and didn't notice any difference. I also tried 10bit uncompressed instead of the animation compressor with no change. (Meaning the QT file, self contained or not, looks great and then mpeg has its way with it.)

Thanks derekmok and bdplaid for your advice.
Still interested in helpful hints if anyone has any.

Much love,
The Dave

> also, no self-contained movies, but rather reference movies might be better.

Not true. Self-contained movie files are always more stable, more reliable (because it's not referencing 500 other clips while it plays back), and there is no difference in quality as long as you used the quality settings you used in the timeline.

There are only two reasons for not using self-contained movie files: Output time and disk space. And for the former, in my own experience, I've found that people waste more time struggling with problems arising from dependent/reference movie files than they spend exporting it self-contained in the first place. And usually if you have no disk space to export the show self-contained, you may not have enough disk space, period, for smooth operation of an editing station.

Hi,

i have never once had a problem with a reference movie; i use them all the time. the only time i recall having to make them was to flatten a quicktime.

however, if I had a project that sat on the drive for awhile and then I wanted to play or use the ref movie at that time, I agree there is is a strong liklihood that links to referred media (and the media itself) may have gone missing. at the minimum, I'd expect rendered files to have gone offline. which is why i re-render old projects before trying to do anything with them.

what i have always been told ever since i started using FCP about 4 years ago was that ref movies were the way to go. and this makes sense to me, since i would be skipping a layer of compression. maybe the prevailing thinking on that has changed and i didn't get the memo. but whatever works for one is what one should do. there's always more than one way to skin these cats!

but regarding the gradient - coincidentally i'm using a series of them myself in an edit as we speak. I'm just using the gradient generator in FCP and it's working fine. I'm curious what's happened to yours, as well. interesting... you did check your render and RT settings in FCP, right? just a flailing stab at the problem.

hd

The problem is almost certainly that the image is too clean. In Photoshop, try adding a 1% of monochromatic noise (Filter>Noise>Add Noise) to the gradient.

Martin Baker
www.digital-heaven.co.uk
NEW! BigTime resizable timecode display for FCP

Would a small amount of Gaussian Blur applied at some stage help?

- Loren
Today's FCP 5 keytip:
Preview effects sections with Option-P or Option-Backslash!

The FCP 5 KeyGuide?: a professional placemat.
Now available at KeyGuide Central:
www.neotrondesign.com

Not sure if this is the right place for this, but...

I've got a similar problem with color/luminosity.

Project #1:

1.) Created "clouds" in Motion
2.) Brought into FCP
3.) They play back with distinct moving bands of grays instead of with
a smooth transition between colors and brightness.

Project #2:

1.) Took a scene and reduced brightness, desaturated, increased the
blues -- going after a day-for-night look.
2.) Applied each dissolve transition in turn to make it work.
3.) In each case, the bright portions of the image exhibit color banding
instead of a smooth transition. The bands shift positions, of course, as
the dissolve progresses.

There is probably a checkbox or radio button that needs tending to fix
this, but I'll be dazzled if I can figure out where (let alone, why).

Anyone experience this?

I'm using Apple's WS 20" monitor, G5, FCP 5.0.4, 4GB ram.

/ps

ps,
it's probably the DV codec "doing its thing".

Try DVCPro 50, that's a better codec.

I agree with Martin

"The problem is almost certainly that the image is too clean. In Photoshop, try adding a 1% of monochromatic noise (Filter>Noise>Add Noise) to the gradient."

Also try rendering the graphic on an 8-bit uncompressed timeline and see if the grad compresses better with that.

Ben



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

basically you get banding on 8 bit gradients.
Pretty much always.
(8 bit color only have 256 variations per color whereas 10 bits have 1024 variations, creating a smoother transition)

If you want to avoid banding work in 10 bits or above all the way until the mpg2 compression stage.

Make a 16 bit gradient in photoshop.
Bring it in to a 10 bit sequence in FCP.
(If the sequence is 8 bits, rendering it out as 10 bits will do absolutely no good)
Render out QT movie with sequence settings.

Johan Polhem
Motion Graphics
www.johanpolhem.com

The noise option essentially creates a dither pattern which helps the 8bit video approximate the gradient better.

Bear in mind that MPEG-2 is only 8bit as is DV, Digibeta, DVCproHD and HDCAM so working 10bit should keep a better quality until its finally outputted as 8bit.

You may find that your clean 10bit gradient still has problems when output to DVD as the image will still be too clean and the compression won't add the dither you need.

Ben



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

"what i have always been told ever since i started using FCP about 4 years ago was that ref movies were the way to go. and this makes sense to me, since i would be skipping a layer of compression"

not so...
there would be no quality difference at all between a ref move, and an export using the current settings.
if you use "current settings" then there is no re-compression


nick

>> "what i have always been told ever since i started using FCP about 4 years ago was that ref
>> movies were the way to go. and this makes sense to me, since i would be skipping a layer
>> of compression"
> not so...
> there would be no quality difference at all between a ref move, and an export using the
> current settings.

And in fact, self-contained movies are a lot stabler, more mobile, and more versatile than reference movies. They can be moved, they are an excellent backup for your picture cut, and they are a near-infallible way to do a tape output because they synthesize all your shots, sounds, effects, titles etc. into one simple, full-quality media file with no layers.

Reference movies are like your project file -- they depend on and continuously access the original raw media, so playback is slower and more complicated, they're more likely to drop frames, and if the original clips are moved or deleted, the reference movie becomes useless.

The only reason not to go self-contained is to save on storage space. And even then, if you don't have enough storage for a self-contained movie file of your show, then in my view you don't have enough storage to finish the show at all.


www.derekmok.com