Native Timeline for JPEGs

Hi there,

I am currently working on a timelapse film shot with a digital SLR and I have trouble importing all the pictures into my FCP timeline. I have tried importing the images in their native JPEG format as well as converted to TIFFs. Yet unfortunately, they always show up with a red render bar in the timeline. I have set my RT settings to be as tolerant as possible and I went through the sequence settings a hundred times trying everything that seemed to make sense to me. I tried Photo - JPEG for the JPEGs and TIFF for the TIFFs. I also tried "None", "JPEG 2000", "Uncompressed", and a few other codecs. I tried square pixels and PAL pixels. I tried to use PAL resolution and I set it to the native resolution of the source images. I turned of fields and also tried to render in RGB as well as YUV. I checked that my sequence settings exactly match the information for the images in the browser. Nothing helped. Is there any way to make that render bar go away or at least turn it into a friendly green?

Thanks a lot!

What version of FCP is this? What computer is this? How much RAM do you have? How big are the images? What format are you working in? What EXACTLY are the item properties of the images?

I am sorry, these are my specs:

Running MacOS 10.4.8 on a 2 Ghz Intel Core Duo with 2 GB RAM. FCP is at version 5.1.4.

You can download one of the images here:

[85.25.20.225]

The others are the same. Thanks!

No matter, what you do - if the content on the timeline doesn't match the codec selected, you will be required to render.

Even if your computer is fast enough to utilize Extreme RT, you won't get a green line above the photos. But to finally output it, you will need to render.

That's exactly what is puzzling me. When I choose Photo-JPEG as a timeline codec that should match the content (the JPEGs), right? Or at least a timeline set to TIFF should match my tiffs, shouldn't it?

It's like the search for the Lost Ark-- there is no native JPEG video format! The price you pay to convert stills animation to video is to use one of the standard SD or HD video codecs and transcode all those stills (render) into video data.

This is why when we introduce stills into video we try to scan smart to reduce render times, keep images sharp when we zoom in. And we don;t use JPEG's-- the compression can be fierce and can introduce oddball artifcats during moves. Convert these using a Photoshop action into TIFF's or native .PSD files-- RGB only.

- Loren
Today's FCP 4 / 5 keytip:
Preview unrendered effects with Option-P or Option-Backslash!

The FCP KeyGuide?: your power placemat.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

It's a still image. It's not video. Rendering for output will always be required. You should get real-time playback depending on how many images, how much RAM you have and how much is allocated to still image cache. These images seem to 2896 pixels across. They're not even in a standard video aspect ratio. They're humongously larger than any standard video format. What format is it you're working in? You didn't say. Where are you trying to get to with this?

If you want to make this a video file, open your image sequence in the QT pro player, set a specific frame rate and convert it to a standard video format of your choice. Unless you reprocess it you can't make still images video simply by assigning a codec. It's not a video file, it's still only a bunch of separate files in a row.

I will be outputting in PAL, but would like my source material to be bigger in order to be able to zoom in. I guess I am just gonna have to deal with rendering. Thanks for the info!

One thing you can do is execute the Factory Clip workflow. Each still you animate in the timeline is a "factory clip"-- you've manufactured the keyframes, Scale, Center properties et al to your liking. Now bracket that clip with In-Out marks and simply export it as a native Final Cut Pro movie clip-- then reimport that. Drag your factory clip into a storage bin and then fill the gap with the import. Voila, no more rendering, and the factory clip is nearby for tweaking if needed.

It's a good workflow on older slower machines especially.

- Loren
Today's FCP 4 / 5 keytip:
Preview unrendered effects with Option-P or Option-Backslash!

The FCP KeyGuide?: your power placemat.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

Thanks for the tip, but since we are talking about thousands of stills here, that seems to be a bit cumbersome.

I just found out something interesting:

I forgot to mention that I set the resolution of the sequence to 768 x 576 px (which is the standard for square pixel PAL, which I will be creating). As soon as I change the resolution to 720 x 576 the red render bar becomes green, making comfortable editing possible. Any idea why this could be?

Quote
John
No matter, what you do - if the content on the timeline doesn't match the codec selected, you will be required to render.

not quite.
if you have RT set to unlimited, you will get the Orange render bar, and you will get some sort of playback.
cold be barely watchable, could be quite acceptable, depending on your systems grunt.

Furthermore, FCP will deal with most graphic formats fine.

i downloaded the image and dropped it in a DV PAL sequence, and it plays perfectly with a green render bar.

Quote

As soon as I change the resolution to 720 x 576 the red render bar becomes green, making comfortable editing possible

the reason you're getting red lines, is because you are usng non-video codecs and frame sizes as your sequence settings.
use a simple video preset, and you should be god to go.
uncompressed would be better than DV
(i tried that and got a green line, too)

what is your final format?
if it;s some flavour of video, then use that for your sequence setting.


cheers,
nick

I see. I was planning on working in 768 x 576, but good old 720 x 576 should also be suitable. I will work in that resolution using the uncompressed 8-bit codec.

Thanks a lot!

You should assemble these stills in a different program and after you've turned them into a film strip then bring them to FCP for editing.