Ideal specs for making a pencil animation for projection?

Hi everyone-

I'm a DIY beginner, and I'm hoping to find some sound advice.

My project: making a hand-drawn animation using pencil only, to ultimately be projected onto a large screen. I don't yet know the size of the projection--perhaps about 10 feet x 10 feet?
I also don't yet know the native resolution of the projector. I do know that it will be in PAL.

My questions: (I have many, sorry.)

-What is the best scanning resolution for drawings that have some shading, fine lines and gray areas? The drawings are about 8x11".
-What is the best file format, size, etc. to export to FCP?
-What is the best file type to make the final video in?
-For better image quality, is it better to burn to DVD or to run the piece off of my external hard drive or laptop, firewired into the projector? Does compression for burning to DVD always make for poorer image quality?

This is what I'm considering doing:

Scanning at 300 dpi, grayscale, 256 grays, 8 bit, uncompressed.
Save as TIFF.
In Photoshop, size them at 1440 w x 1152 h.
Also save the pixel aspect ratio at D1/DV PAL 1.006
Save as TIFF
Import into FCP

...at this point, I don't know how to save/compress the animation in a way that allows it to have high image quality. I don't have Sorenson or anything fancy, just Quicktime. I may put a filter on it, but won't have tons of effects and renderings. Also, it will be in PAL, but I'm wondering about widescreen and the other "shaping" options for projection.
I was also reading somewhere about the aesthetic beauty and render/process time reduction of doing animations at 24 frames per sec, as was I guess the old fashioned way. Does anybody have any thoughts on this? Would it work anyway for PAL?
Again, I need to find out the native resolution of the projector, and the size of my projected image. But in general, does anybody have any good rules of thumb for this kind of project, or have any corrections to make to my workflow?

I know this is a ton of questions. Much thanks to anyone in advance who has the patience and good will to offer any words of wisdom.

If it were me I'd do it in 1920x1080 HD and then export to H.264 1080p when done and then project direct from your computer. Just because the projection is PAL standard definition shouldn't stop you from creating at a higher level of quality.

Noah

Final Cut Studio Training, featuring the HVX200, EX1, EX3, DVX100, DVDSP and Color at [www.callboxlive.com]!
Author, RED: The Ultimate Guide to Using the Revolutionary Camera available now at: [www.amazon.com].
Editors Store- Gifts and Gear for Editors: [www.editorsstore.com]

Thank you, NoahK. I will look into your suggestions. But frankly, I've never dealt with HD, and don't have a clue how to proceed.
Hopefully this dumb question won't make you pros cringe too much.....is there a way you'd suggest going about making it HD? I'm such a novice, there is so much more that I DON'T know about Final Cut, and video in general, than what I do know. Do I need an HD camera to capture, or can I convert my stills somehow within final cut?

Well HD is just the frame size in this case 1920x1080 vs 720x480- these are for NTSC btw but PAL is similar just look it up. Since you're drawing on paper you wouldn't need an HD camera just a decent scanner. And then a program that could assist with things like onion skinning, etc like:

[boinx.com]

From there FCP would be primarily for putting everything together- taking each piece of animation trimming the in and out etc. Then adding color correction and sound effects, etc. You'd be working in HD resolution- which in FCP is really not that different from working in standard definition except of course- much better image quality. Then when you're done you can use DVD Studio Pro to make an SD DVD version while retaining the high-definition version for Web, direct playout etc.

Hope that helps.

Noah

Final Cut Studio Training, featuring the HVX200, EX1, EX3, DVX100, DVDSP and Color at [www.callboxlive.com]!
Author, RED: The Ultimate Guide to Using the Revolutionary Camera available now at: [www.amazon.com].
Editors Store- Gifts and Gear for Editors: [www.editorsstore.com]

Wow, great. I will check it out. Thank you for taking the time to reply to me, NoahK. I really appreciate it!

whats your experience with pencil animation? there is as much to figure out to do that well as any other part of the process...

like noah said, really the biggest deal is going to be how you scan the drawings in. you'll want a good high resolution grayscale scan, id guess 300-600dpi at original size (depending on the subtleties you want to capture) then its just a matter of scaling and filtering (which can be automated in photoshop) to your target HD res and importing as an image sequence.

there are of course a million other subtle things you'll want to futz with. but these are your basics.

Hi Wayne,

Yes, I think you are both right. Scanning in at hi res is definitely the way to go. Thank you for your input, I do appreciate it.
I'm waiting to hear what the native resolution of the projector is that we will be using at the show. I'm assuming I'll need to scale the scanned drawings and video image size to match that. That's correct, right?
By the way, do you happen to know if TIFFS are the way to go for something like this? Or would PNGs or something else be better? Are you an animator?
I'm doing the 300 dpi grayscale, 256 grays, 8 bit uncompressed thing for now. It seems ok, but I can't really know till I see the animation projected large. That's why I'm so worried.
By the way, my animation experience is zero. I'm a painter who is winging it here, and this is my first animation. But my little tester clip in iMovie looks good so far, in terms of the movement, etc. (Though the image quality is terrible, of course.)
I wish there were just some basic formulas available out there somewhere to be found! Some magical guide somewhere. But I think what you said is true, that there are a million things to futz with.

i wouldnt hold myself hostage to the res of one specific projector.

i say work with (the PAL equivalent of) 1080 HD and you'll be fine for anything downconverted.

and when ive worked with animation files in the past (i RECEIVE them not CREATE them) they are generally a TIFF or TARGA files. and since you are drawing and not doing 3d modeling. i say your well of sticking with TIFFS instead of JPG, PNG, PCT, etc...

yes, ok. Thanks!

Pretty much what everyone says, but I add my .02--

-What is the best scanning resolution for drawings that have some shading, fine lines and gray areas? The drawings are about 8x11".]

Depends on your delivery format.

-What is the best file format, size, etc. to export to FCP?

You can choose SD or two flavors of HD.

-What is the best file type to make the final video in?

As indicated in above posts.

-For better image quality, is it better to burn to DVD or to run the piece off of my external hard drive or laptop, firewired into the projector? Does compression for burning to DVD always make for poorer image quality? ]

Some codecs step on your image pretty heavily and artifacting will be noticeable projected. H.264 is a neat codec which scales nicely.

Now to scan rate. For an 8.5 X 11 animation cel, which depends on your ingest format--

For SD 720 X 576 PAL you can fill the frame scanning at 70 dpi.

For HD 1280 X 720 you can fill the frame scanning at 117 DPI.

For HD 1920 X 1080 you can fill the frame scanning at 176 DPI.

At no time do you need 300 DPI to fill any frame-- unless you intend to zoom in. This cuts your rendering and export times roughly in half.

More right here.

- Loren
Photo scan rates demystified!
ScanGuide? Pro compact reference now at
www.neotrondesign.com

Hi Loren,

Thanks for your 2 cents!
I love the idea of cutting my rendering and export times in half, very much. Especially on my old machine.
But....won't a pencil drawing that was originally scanned in at 176 dpi not look as good in the final video result as one that gets scanned at 300dpi? Even with the big 1920 x 1080 HD action and the nice H.264 codec, which "steps up the image pretty heavily," as you said? Because if there is less info to step up from, i.e. the lower res of the original file, doesn't that not really work out? I'd read somewhere that lower res scans can't really be improved upon too much, later on, and that it's always better to begin with a better quality original file.
Forgive me, I'm not trying to argue, I'm actually trying to learn, and save myself a TON of trial and error, as I don't have lots of time. I don't really know what I'm doing, and I keep hearing really different opinions. It's confusing at best!
By the way, no, I don't plan to zoom in.

Quote
PDC
won't a pencil drawing that was originally scanned in at 176 dpi not look as good in the final video result as one that gets scanned at 300dpi?

Video is not the same as print. dpi is irrelevant in video since the number of pixels for any given format are fixed. In print, you could have a 10'x10' poster made from a 100 dots per inch (dpi) or 300 or whatever. Therefore the higher the dpi the better. The misconception is that this translates to video.

Video however, is fixed. That means that a 1920x1080 HD video will always have 1920 pixels horizontal by 1080 pixels vertical no matter if you view it on a 23" monitor or 50' theater screen. The number of pixels don't change.

What's important in video is the pixel size. You should make sure that your scans are at least 1920x1080 in size. Scan in grayscale, and use color correction to increase the contrast so there is better definition between the dark of the pencil lines and the white of the paper. It's my experience that paper scans in a little gray.

andy

Thank you, andy. That makes a lot of sense. Match the TIFF size to the pixel size of the video.

Just to make sure I understand...(it's not easy being inexperienced...)
So you're saying that it doesn't matter what dpi I initially scan my images at, yes? I could do 150 x 150 or 300 x 300, and it would make no difference in image quality in the final video result. As long as I did grayscale, and helped it out w/ corrections to the dark & lights.
You're saying that the scan doesn't matter, but that what does matter is that I SIZE my saved TIFFS at at least 1920 x 1080, (or whatever pixel size I choose for my video.)

I get this, since video sizes are fixed, and yet...the difference in quality of a 150 x 150 scan versus a 300 x 300 scan is quite clear to me on my monitor. Wouldn't that carry over into the video, no matter what the size of the video?

Scans at higher dpi translate into larger sized images in video. The relative dpi for video is no higher than 72 dpi.

At some point, scanning photos in at too high a dpi will result in a moire effect as the video codec aliases the image.

If you scanned a 8x11 piece of paper in at 300 dpi, and then put that into 1080 frame, FCP would see it as an incredibly large photo (perhaps in the 4000x2900 range depending on the math) and would automatically size it down to fit the 1920x1080 frame. All the fine detail that was captured in the scan would then be aliased and any fine lines (such as in a pencil drawing) would start to "crawl". A visual artifact known as moire.

You may be able to see the difference on your monitor, but that's because you can zoom in at will to frame sizes larger than 1920x1080. That cannot happen in video. 1920x1080 will have the same amount of pixels on the screen on a 23" monitor as on a 25' screen. The only difference between the two will be that each pixel on the theater screen will be much larger than the pixels on a 23" monitor.

HD is only high definition in comparison to standard definition. It's actually a pretty low resolution when compared to 2K or film or still photos.

If you plan to zoom into the drawings at any point instead of keeping a fixed distance, then you might want to scan your drawings in slightly larger than the 1080 frame size. Perhaps as much as 150%. Then when resized in FCP, the image will remain crisp. I use this rule of thumb regularly with all my scanned photos. This way you can reposition the frame to make the most of your drawings.

Andy

I usually recommend scanning the photos/images in at a higher DPI. Then save that image in a smaller version under a new file name for video, at 72dpi. Because scanning is a very slow, laborious process, and you can't always be sure that you won't need a version for print or web media that's larger than your video frame size. And as Andy says, video images are pretty small compared to the kinds of frame sizes print media uses, which means if you scanned at video size in the beginning, the images would be very small.

So I'd usually try to anticipate for future non-video uses of the scans by scanning big, at a high DPI. Then optimize smaller copies of those files for video. This way, if you later need a larger image for other purposes, you can go back to the original large scan. Resaving and resizing files in Photoshop takes far less time than having to rescan all those images at a larger size later.


www.derekmok.com

I'm still confused.

I'm very grateful to have access to the opinions of people who are much more experienced than I. But I guess it's my inexperience that keeps me confused and unable to sift through the different opinions to determine the answers that will work for my project.

Different people are saying different things, and each thing sounds good in theory. But the opinions are sometimes conflicting. Perhaps I'm slow, but at this point I still don't know how to proceed.

Derek's suggestion was in case you might need prints of your scanned drawings at some point. A good practice if you don't want to rescan your drawings. He's not really saying different things with regards to the facts, just offering up his workflow.

I understand how this can seem confusing. It takes awhile to get your head around it when you're doing it for the first time. People on these forums tend to avoid giving concrete advice because there are always different workflows for different situations and since we're not in your shoes, we don't always know what will work best for you. However, if you want some absolutism, I'll do my best:

Scan your drawings in at 300dpi. Give the images a number in the file name like: drawing 001, drawing 002, etc.

Open them in photoshop. Convert the scanned images to 1920x1080 at 72dpi and save as a copy, leaving your originals intact.

Open the images as an image sequence in Quicktime Pro. Export as a movie using H.264 (or ProRes if you need to do any editing in FCP).

Deliver to whomever you need to deliver. Play the file from your computer. Do NOT make a DVD.

Hope that helps.

Andy

> Scan your drawings in at 300dpi. Give the images a number in the file name like: drawing
> 001, drawing 002, etc.
> Open them in photoshop. Convert the scanned images to 1920x1080 at 72dpi and save as a
> copy, leaving your originals intact.

Precisely.

DPI does matter at the scanning stage, because it determines how many pixels are assigned to an inch of information. The more pixels, the more nuances of the image you capture.

DPI ceases to matter in video, because a video image is a pre-set number of pixels, eg. 1920x1080.

Here's an even quicker way to do the "versioning" I was talking about.

Scan your drawings as Andy described, naming them "Frame 0001", "Frame 0002", etc. Or "drawing0001" if you like. Doesn't matter. Scan them at 300dpi. Put them all into one folder, eg. "scans101_300dpi".

Select the whole folder in Mac OS and press APPLE-D (Duplicate). Rename the copy of the folder "scans 201_1920x1080".

You now have a verbatim copy of all your scans, only in a different folder.

Go into "scans101_300dpi", select all the files, press OPTION-APPLE-I, and lock them. That should keep your original big scans intact.

Now use R-Name or another batch-file-renaming software on the files in "scans201_1920x1080" to add a suffix to every file name, such as "_small". So now those files will be called "drawing0001_small", "drawing0002_small".

This way, you can simply open all those files, run a Photoshop automated Action on each one, APPLE-S to save. It's much faster than having to do "Save As" on every file and give it a new name. There are other ways to batch-process a large number of stills, but I'm not too familiar with them; others may have better suggestions.

Remember that all these files are non-expendable. Once you've got them organized, renamed and formatted properly, back them up to a safe source such as a data DVD or external drive.


www.derekmok.com

Loren has pretty much laid things out with his scan guide Which you should pick up from his post earlier.

------------------------
Dean

"When I see you floating down the gutter I'll give you a bottle of wine."
Captain Beefheart, Trout Mask Replica.

PDC, as an artist consider the following.
Your 11x8? drawings have format 1.29:1. In video they'll be modified to one of two standard formats: 4:3 or 16:9. 4:3 is much closer to your paper format. If you cut off 1/8" along both long edges of your paper, that's 4:3. To use 16:9 requires radical recomposition of your artwork, or else black bars on the edges of the screen.
4:3 is generally identified with SD and 16:9 is identified with HD. Those are television notions, not art video notions. It is not be necessary to have low resolution with 4:3 format.
Pencil drawings, indeed all line drawings where pressure influences line width or darkness, are quite hard to reproduce. This is why drawings in art books rarely excite (while paintings often do). The aesthetic values of a pencil drawing will more or less dissolve in television SD or HD formats. Note however that one important aesthetic quality of drawings can't be captured in any animation format: the paper texture. You must suppress the paper texture (e.g. in FCP or Color) because otherwise it will appear to jump around at 25 /sec (or at 12? /sec if you animate on twos). It is best if you use nearly textureless paper for the drawing, so the briefly seen line doesn't have meaningless texture details.

I suggest the artist try something bold. Scan your drawings at 300 dpi. If your scanner allows greater than 24 bit color, choose that option. (You want to make this in color, because pencil lines show subtle color, though I fear scanner illumination will kill diffraction's contribution to color.) Make hefty .tif files.
Import them to a FCP timeline with high resolution 4:3 sequence settings as follows:
...Frame Size: 2048 X 1536 Film (Adademy) (4:3)
...Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square
...Field Dominance: None
...Compressor: Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2
This approaches the quality of a 35mm cine animation stand.
Export the giant QuickTime file from the timeline.
You will be able to play it on a fast computer with a good graphics card and good player, with image quality such as you'd never expect from video.
You can also compress it as required for other uses.
MPEG2 and H.264 typically use inter-frame compression. This is a no-no for sensitive animation work. Since your frames are each mostly white, very high intra-frame compression is possible, and inter-frame compression can be avoided. Use your compressor settings to force each frame to be a "key frame".

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

> This is why drawings in art books rarely excite (while paintings often do). The aesthetic values
> of a pencil drawing will more or less dissolve in television SD or HD formats.

That's something of a broad generalization considering we don't know what his content is. See La Belle Noiseuse, for example. And one of the best experimental films I"ve ever seen is a "storyboard on film", one that blew the AMPAS judge panel away, as well as the fellow contestants including my team. It's doable. And since the scans can be redone as often as you want, you can experiment. Do 10 frames and see how they turn out.

It's fair to assess what is lost in the translation from paper to screen. But content is king. Paper texture will be quite moot if the style fits the piece and the content is compelling.


www.derekmok.com

Sure, this guy's animination might look best on a cellphone screen, or projected onto a fountain. My suggestions were for the case where line quality mattered.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

In addition to all the good advice offered above, I'd add one suggestion: do a 10 frame test of your workflow right from one end to the other. Scan 10 of your drawings, collate them, rename them, import them into FCP, edit them, spit them back out in whatever format you choose, etc. This'll show up the 'Gotchas' pretty quick, and save you the anguish of finding you've made a small mistake early in the workflow that can only be fixed by redoing the work. (AKA the 'Do I slit my wrists now?' moment...)

I'd do some frame rate tests, too. Animation rarely requires 24 drawings per second of screen time.

randy

> this guy's animination might look best on a cellphone screen, or projected onto a fountain.

Huh?


www.derekmok.com

Hey everybody-

I stepped away from the computer for a day, and returned to a whole new, huge batch of great info. I want to thank everybody in this whole conversation for taking the time to share his or her wisdom with me. You all have been quite generous, patient, and awesome.
I was flipping out before, but now feel much more confident to make some tester clips, and take it from there. You all have saved me TONS of trial and error, or rather, error and error, and the stress that goes along with it. I sincerely appreciate it.

Best regards,

PDC