tif or jpg for photos used in video?

Hello Everyone!

Many thanks in advance to anyone reading this. I am making a "slideshow" video on FCP7. So I am putting photos, color and black and white, on a timeline and then exporting an HD video in apple pro res 422 HQ. The photo files are all larger than 1920x1080.

>QUESTION: Is it better to use photos in tiff format for the video? (In the photo world, tiffs are better of course but I do not know whether one can appreciate this in an HD video. The tiffs are bigger files on the other hand.) I want it to look as good as possible of course.

I am using FCP 7.0.3 on a MacBook Pro (mid-2012) with OS 10.8.4.

Many thanks everyone!

Kind regards,
Robert

robert
robertohp2001@yahoo.com

i guess the less compressed the image the better, so TIFFs would be preferable there.
if you already have jpg files you wont get any more from them by converting to TIFF.
what do you have?

as for frame-size, if the images are VERY large, they can look bad in FCP,
as its down-scaling can struggle .
you would be better to reduce the frame size before you brought them into FCP,
leaving enough head-room to cope with any zooms you may need to do.


cheers,
nick

Hi Nick,

Thank you very much for your help! I have tiffs. I scanned old prints on a flat bed scanner. So yes, staying with tiff sounds good. A few files I have as jpegs and yes it makes no sense to convert those to tiff.

You say that if the images are very large, that FCP could struggle with the downscaling to 1920x1080px. My biggest images are
5200x3600pixels. Some of them I will zoom in to and others not.
Question>> Do you think FCP will do well in downscaling these 5200x3600px??

Thank you very much!!

Kind regards,
Robert

hi Robert,

in my experience, they can look a bit ragged.
your best bet is to try them and see what you think.

in your sequence settings, go to the video processing tab, and set "motion filtering " to best.
im not sure how much that will help, but it can't hurt.


BUT files that large (over 4000 pixels) might cause FCP to crash.
it's not a definite thing, but it doesn't love them.
Having said that I've worked with end title rollers whose hight was 10,000 pixels or more, so it can be done.

the simplest thing to do would be to do a batch re-size down to 50%
of course it depends how much you want to zoom into them too.
but having a small and large option would be pretty useful, i imagine.


i hope that helps,
nick

Robert-

As usual, Nick covers the waterfront on this issue. At 5K pixels wide, you surpass FCP7's G-World limit (a Quicktime 7 limitation, actually) of 4K square. You do risk chokes and hangs and crashes with "heavy tiffs" in your timeline. I would definitely downscale your tiffs in Photoshop so something within FCP7's comfort zone.

I'm assuming FCPX has a more generous G-world for photos, but have not tested it. Someone like Tom Wolsey should log in on that.

Tiffs are preferred for photomotion. JPEGS, unless very data rich (like uncompressed) can wobble and twitter on moves, forcing you to add a small amount blur. This technique is also applied to moving TIFFS because they can exhibit too much detail! Rich scans can result in fine dust spots winking during moves.

So the question is, do you need the overhead DPI for moves, zoom-ins or any magnification? In tests I did many moons ago, I found that HD is more forgiving of enlargement even at only 1920 pixels wide. You might play it safe and downscale your 5K's to half that size if you intend serious enlargement. Whether it's in landscape or portrait orientation, keep the longest side well with 4K pixels.

Downscale, save it under a unique name, like "photoname_DS_01" to avoid overwriting the original.

Import and test enlargement - what's it look like when you scale 200%? 400%? Can you view this on a large monitor?

It cab be tricky; without enough data, the Quicktime engine will "invent" pixels, which softens the image. With too much data, you get twinkles, twitters and crashes.

There's an old article over here that might help with procedurals-

Photo Scanning

There is some dated software material referenced you can ignore, but the essentials are still useful.

Best, as always.
Loren

Robert didn't say he intends zooms in his "slide show", but if he does, then Nick's suggestion to import higher resolution photos into the HD timeline makes good sense. It yields photos that zoom into their subjects, rather than zooms, à la Antonioni, into the photos themselves.

Nick's suggestion works if the zooms, or blow-ups, are done using the Scale control in the Motion tab. When, for example, a 3840×2160 pixel photo (or video clip) is imported into the 1920×1080 timeline it doesn't become a 1920×1080 thing, even after rendering. Look in the Motion tab. It shows scale 50%. The photo (or video clip) is still a 3840×2160 thing. The reserve pixels are available for Motion scale greater than 50%.

Note that the Motion tab works differently from a filter in this regard. There is a scale control in the Basic 3D filter too. If you use this to zoom into, or blow-up, the imported 3840×2160 photo, it can access only the 1920×1080 pixels of the reduced thing. The 2× blow-up done by setting the Basic 3D filter scale to 200% is much less sharp than the equal 2× blow-up done by raising the Motion scale to 100%.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

Thank you everyone for all of your generous help!!

Best regards,
Robert

Hello everyone,

Loren I now see what you mean with wobbles and twitters on the zooms. I made my files much smaller, about 2100px wide. I show the complete photo and when I do a 4% zoom in over 5.5 seconds, the edges of the picture wobble and jitter. Is there any way around this?

Loren, you had written the following but i do not understand what you mean with adding blur nor do I know how I would do it?

From your message Loren:
Tiffs are preferred for photomotion. JPEGS, unless very data rich (like uncompressed) can wobble and twitter on moves, forcing you to add a small amount blur. This technique is also applied to moving TIFFS because they can exhibit too much detail! Rich scans can result in fine dust spots winking during moves.

Thanks a lot for any help! My deadline is coming up!

Best regards,
Robert

have you rendered?
RT playback can look a bit wobbly

nick

Hi Nick,

Thanks for your reply. Yes I have rendered. In my sequences I have
Motion Filter Quality: Best
Render 10-bit material in high precision YUV.


I also tried motion filter quality in "Normal" but it is not better. The edges of the image, which is smaller than the frame, are wobbly/shaky as FCP zooms in using motion tab functions. I zoom in about 4% of the scale size.

Thank you!
Best regards,
Robert

Oh, just 4% zoom. Then my earlier comment about needing pixels in reserve is not germane. This sounds like a jittery (vertical or horizontal) edge effect having nothing to do with picture detail.

But I encounter no jittery edge effect when I try what might be a similar zoom. It moves smoothly. So what are the pixel dimensions of your still image, and what are the scale values in the Motion tab at the start and the end of the 132 (?) frame zoom?

I'm using FCP 7.0.3 on OSX 10.7.5.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

Hi Dennis,

Thank you for your reply. You are right, the jittery is only on the vertical edge/border of the photograph against the light gray background of the frame. The photo (on V2 track) does not fill the frame and I made the gray background (on V1 track) using Solid Color Matte.

On some photos I go in motion from about 88% to 92%. Others are 80% to 84%. My photos are usually about 1300x2100 pixels.

A very few I do zoom in 50% but they are full screen so there is no issue. It only happens when the full photo is smaller than the video screen so that we see the edge.

Thank you!
Cheers,
Robert

Hi Robert,
If you make the zoom without the grey on V1, the edge moves smoothly throughout. I put red on track V1, with an undersized B&W photo on V2, and the edge jittered wildly. You can single-frame through it, with the FCP 7 viewer at 800%, to watch the action. The photo enlarges smoothly, its edge moving pixel by pixel, while the background's edge makes larger jumps frames apart, hence the jazz. This seems like a compositing bug in FCP 7 occurring when one component of a composite is less than full frame.

With grey on V1 the jitter is less severe than with red, but similar. However, putting black on track V1, there is no problem. The edge moves smoothly, just as when there is nothing on track V1. What is going on?

I then made a freeze frame of the first frame of your zoom: the 88% picture on the red matte. I exported a .mov file from this and re-imported it to the timeline where I applied the wanted zoom (which now goes from 100% to 104.5%). Horrors! The red edge is as jittery as in the composited zoom! So this is a deeper bug in FCP 7, in the zoom function itself.

I don't see any solution in FCP7. Zooming using the Basic 3D filter is no better. I suggest you forgo the grey until a solution is found.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

All the zoom tests I described yesterday used ProRes HQ. Then I tried codec "None". The edges, whether on red, grey or black grounds, moved quite smoothly.

"None" is an old Apple codec that is essentially an 8-bit RGB bitmap. If you don't have it with your FCP7 it's probably just disabled. Enable it using the command given at:

Quote
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8262102

qtdefaults write LegacyVideoCodecs AppleNone enabled

So is the bug that made the jerky edge motion within FCP7 in the nexus of ProRes and zooming? To test this I took the clip of trials in codec "None" and transcoded it to ProRes HQ using Compressor. The jerky edges against red returned!

So this is no bug in FCP7, but a weakness in ProRes HQ. For this effect ProRes 444 is no better, so this is not just a matter of chroma subsampling, while ProRes XQ is somewhat better.

Many of us rely on ProRes HQ. I fear this finding means that with ProRes HQ any vertical or horizontal slowly moving edge having on one side an extent of, e.g., red will move jerkily.

I don't suggest using codec "None" except to see that it works for this effect. It's not a practical codec at 1244 Mbps for 1920x1080 25p, etc. ProRes XQ (available in FCP7 in Mountain Lion) gives fairly good results at 1/3 the bitrate.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

[Note added 9 Sept 2018: zoom test results, with red, grey, and black grounds, using codecs ProRes HQ, ProRes XQ, and "None" can be downloaded at: [www.mediafire.com] . Some systems aren't fast enough to play the "None" file correctly. Then make comparisons by stepping through frames.]

Dennis -

(Sorry, Robert, late in getting back to this.)

Aha! Changed the sequence codec away from HQ. I actually cringed when Robert wrote "ProRes HQ"-- I've never had anything but disaster using 8-bit effects and filters in 10-bit footage on FCP7. I think it is a weakness in the QT 7.x codec, which works perfectly well on ProRes HD (classic 8-bit). 10 bit is great if you need an image without color banding and smooth gradients, but isn't really needed for preprocessed photos set in motion. The solution I use in cases of line twitter is a range of Gaussian Blur filter, from 0.25 to 1.0 pixel.

I say range because, on occasion, as you pass through a certain section near head or tail of the zoom, you can apply less blur, and ramp up using the filter's keyframes, as the trouble area approaches, and then ramp back down after. Done right, the effect is practically invisible.

On edges such as described above, there is also a Feather Edge function, part of the Crop tool in the motion panel, which may help.

Blur also works on HD images which can reveal even more detail, but like the above, I don't add it in preprocessing in Photoshop, Gimp, Pixelmater, etc. I like to see interactively what works after rendering, and what doesn't.

HTH

Best, as always.
Loren