Hey Kids,

Anyone know a good way to get rid of jagged edges. For example...I have three layers of video w/ a gaussian blur, all different sizes and rotations. The main video clip has a slight rotation to it. When the clips are angled I get all kinds of terrible looking jaggies on the sides of the video clips. If there is a trick it would really help.

Thanks, Jason

It's possible you're watching it wrong.

Force the Canvas View to 100% with the little tab on top and then pull the window out larger until there is gray around all the edges of the picture. Now you're watching all the television fields instead of only one. Does that look better? That's more what the final output is going to look like.

If that looks ratty and jaggy, then you my have started with too small a graphic for your work.

Koz

Koz,

I'm not working w/ graphics here...just raw footage. All I am doing is rotating the image after I re-size it to 70% and rotating it to 10.45. There are step-like jaggies on the edges of the video. Any more suggestions...and nothing changed after I went to 100% on the Canvas.

Thanks, J

<<<nothing changed after I went to 100% on the Canvas..>>>

It should have changed. Did you pull the window out larger until there was gray around the edges? This only work in still mode, too.

Koz

Koz,

It still is really jagged. I put a soft edges filter on the video files and that seemed to help.

-J

you need to check it out on an external monitor to see if it's really a problem - burn a dvd if you need to.

The NTSC is where I am getting all of the problems on.

<<<The NTSC is where I am getting all of the problems on.>>>

Ah. It would have been good to know that at the top.

So yes, You can't just take a video signal and turn it in the frame with no oddball effects. There are several graphics and math laws working against you--especially if you only rotate a little. You get screen-door and picket fence rippling effects.

The Big Kids get around some of these problems with heavy interpolation--effectively guessing what the video would have been in the holes between the jaggies. Those programs and machines tend to cost more than Final Cut.

Yes, softening helps. That spreads out the error into the holes
between the jaggies, but makes the picture soft and correct me, but there's no way to dissolve into the effect? The picture suddenly clicks soft and then rotates.

So what you're doing is normal and has been with special effects systems for a while. I'm open to other guesses about making it look better.

Koz

Kind of weird this. Scaling has been MUCH improved with FCP 5. Hope it didn't get broken with 5.1.2. Sometimes nudging the rotating/angle clip left, right, up, down a couple pixels or wherever helps. Koz can tell you why it helps. None of this stuff makes sense to me.

Michael Horton
-------------------

<<<None of this stuff makes sense to me.>>>

Me neither. Wizardry and witchcraft. Sometimes JuJu, depending on the angle involved.

But he's right. This effect changes greatly with the angle of rotation and the amount of zoom. Play with it.

Koz

Have you tried making a matte in photoshop and then dropping your footage behind that.

Derek

Big D,

I actually did do that after I had tries a lot of the other techs. It worked perfect...and honestly looks great.

Thanks for all the help guys.

-Jason