stills very pixelated when export movie

my version final cut is 5.1
RAM 1.5GB

I have hundreds of stills I have to put together into a bunch of mp4 movies for playing on computer. The stills are 4000 x 3000. sometimes I have to throw in some 640 x 480 video shot from the same camera

the photos come out super-pixelated when I export to the final quicktime movie mpeg-4 640x480.

i have the sequence settings at 640 x 480

I read an apple.com support forum comment that said because the stills are so large that when i render out to the sequence settings that are so much smaller it is impossibe for the stills to look good.

after reading the comment in the support forum i tried a custom sequence setting 4000 x 3000 (I know sounds crazy) and then exported to 640 x 480. just did test with two still frames 2 seconds ea. still garbage.

i thought the pixelation would only happen if I took a smaller pixel image and made it scale to a larger pixel sequence setting. I thought it was safe to go in the other direction. When I drag the stills into the timeline, I see they automatically scale (viewer > motion tab) to 16 to fit into the sequence settings.

I have a time stamp burned into the still images by the camera and it comes out too fuzzy as well. Another strange thing is that if I took couple stills and put them into imovie 6 (don't have imovie09), they would export and be nice and sharp if I chose "full quality" quicktime export. although if I changed the scale in imovie6 to not cut off some of the burned-in timestamp, they became too pixelated.

I experimented with a different setting sequences and export settings and everything comes out too pixelated

for export I used "using quicktime conversion" with mpeg-4
in the sequence settings I test for "quicktime video compressor" with mpeg-4 video and DV/DVCPRO-NTSC

It seems like this should be very simple to do. I want to do a lot of text/titles over the images and maybe some voiceover so I really want to use fcp rather than imovie.

Thanks!
Lu

You could be chasing a ghost here. If even your 640x480 video comes out blurry in a 640x480 timeline, my first suspect would be that you're not using a high enough bitrate for the final MPEG-4 compression. How large are the resulting files? How long is the running time of the video?


www.derekmok.com

thanks - results of 2 tests both had same problems with fuzzy/pixelated
5 stills [4000 x 3000] used 2 sec ea
dropped into timeline
Motion> Scale was 16
Came out to 10 sec long and file size 92 kb from

Sequence Settings
Frame size: 640 x 480
Pixel aspect ratio: Square
Field Dominance: Lower (event)
Editing timebase: 29.97
Quicktime video Settings
Compressor: MPEG-4
Quality 100%

Exported Using QuickTime Conversion
Format: MPEG-4
Chose Options & new pop-up window
MPEG-4 Export Settings widow
File Format: MP4
Video Format: MPEG-4 Basic
Data Rate: 64 kbits/sec
Image Size: 640 x 480 VGA
Frame rate: 15
Key Frame: every 24 frames

Same sequence settings &
Did 2nd export with
Format: MPEG-4
Chose Options & new pop-up window
MPEG-4 Export Settings widow
File Format: MP4
Video Format: MPEG-4 Improved
Data Rate: 256 kbits/sec
Image Size: 640 x 480 VGA
Frame rate: 30
Key Frame: every 24 frames

Came out 10 sec long and file size 252 kb

First, do NOT use a 4000 pixel image for a 640 frame size. If you don't need to move on the image, make your still image 640x480 and apply a one pixel vertical motion blur to it in Photoshop.

All the best,

Tom

Quote

Data Rate: 64 kbits/sec
Data Rate: 256 kbits/sec

What.

Tom is right. However, a 10-second clip at 252KB? That's horribly tiny. We routinely compress a 30-second spot to 8MB, at least. So you need to up your bit rate to at least 1000kbps. For a 10-second clip, I'd go as high as 3000-5000kbps. Also, don't use the MPEG-codec -- export an MPEG-4 in the H.264 codec. Unless you take care of that final step, nothing you make will look remotely okay and you'll be spinning around and around.


www.derekmok.com

Thanks so much everyone.

When starting out, I had not changed the kbps from whatever showed when the export dialogue box opened and realize.

So, I did H.264 for export with 1000 kbps (even with the 4000 x 3000) and that immed improved my little test

then I went back to my orig 4-min piece which I did many of titles on already and re-sized all the stills per Tom's remark (as had done no camera moves on the stills) to 640 x 480 with the 1 pixel vertical motion blur. exported with h.264 at 1000 kbps. piece ended up 29.6 MB and looks great. all the burned in time stamps on the stills are crisp which I guess was aided by the motion blur done in photoshop.

thanks again SO MUCH!!! wow -- how much better was this than digging through apple.com and just coming up with a few old mushy apples?

Quote

Sequence Settings
Frame size: 640 x 480
Pixel aspect ratio: Square
Field Dominance: Lower (event)
Editing timebase: 29.97
Quicktime video Settings
Compressor: MPEG-4

That's your sequence settings? You should work at ProRes SD NTSC. Then, keep the same frame rate when you export.

You should pick up a good tutorial book or DVD from the store before you start so you don't make a mess of your workflow.

[www.lafcpug.org]



www.strypesinpost.com

> That's your sequence settings? You should work at ProRes SD NTSC.

strypes, she's working on FCP5.1, so no ProRes.

However, setting the timeline codec to MPEG-4 was a mistake. It's not an editing codec. DV NTSC probably would have been the way to go here.

Bizarrely, my home FCP5 system (PowerPC G5) can edit ProRes 422 1080i clips (generated on an FCP7 Intel MacPro via Log and Transfer) in an Apple Intermediate Codec timeline. Takes rendering, but it plays and exports. I honestly have no idea why it can handle ProRes; I don't see a ProRes plugin in my QuickTime Library, either. If anybody can tell me why, I'd be grateful.


www.derekmok.com

Ah. I didn't see the FCP 5 part.

>Bizarrely, my home FCP5 system (PowerPC G5) can edit ProRes 422 1080i clips (generated on an
>FCP7 Intel MacPro via Log and Transfer) in an Apple Intermediate Codec timeline.

That's because Quicktime comes with a ProRes decoder, so you can play back (decode), but you cannot render to ProRes or convert to ProRes (encode).



www.strypesinpost.com

If you look in /System/Library/QuickTime you'll find the ProRes decoder component. It's built in to QuickTime. Has been for ages and ages.

I had looked for ProRes before getting to the point of posting here, but didn't see it in the Sequence Settings Compressor drop-down option. I guess not avail in FCP5.1 -- also, I orig was using DV/DVCPRO-NTSC but experimented changing that to MPEG-4 when I was trying to figure out what needed changing to fix the pixelation.

Should I use for Compressor in Seq Settings DV/DVCPRO-NTSC or H.264? I'm exporting using H.264 codec per Derek Mok's earlier recommendation.

Thanks all.

>Should I use for Compressor in Seq Settings DV/DVCPRO-NTSC or H.264?

DV.



www.strypesinpost.com