Scanning photos/graphics for FCP/Motion DVCPRO HD 1080i60

Hi all, any help would be (as always) greatly appreciated, apologies for the long post and if this stuff has been covered elsewhere in the forums, I couldn't find it...

FCP DVCPRO HD 1080i60 project, editing w/ offline system, online will be done out of house. I need to scan photos/graphics of varying sizes and types, and because I plan to retouch the photos, I would like to scan initially at the highest rate to avoid rescanning later (or is this a bad idea?)

I have Motion and PS Elements (came w/ scanner), but am considering purchasing AE and full PS program at a later time if need be. New to Motion but I know AE fairly well.

For tests I've been scanning photos/slides (TIFS) into PS Elements, then bringing them into Motion and exporting stills/photomotion with their DVCPRO HD 1080i60 setting, then dropping that rendered file into FCP timeline. It seems to work fairly well but raises questions:

1) For DVCPRO HD 1080i60, what is minimum scan dpi necessary if I want to zoom WAY in (like ECU, all the way in to get photo grain) on the images and not have pixellation, artifacting, etc. in the final show?

I ask for dpi because that's what my scanner goes by. At 1800, 2400, 6400 I can zoom all the way in and it seems ok, but I'd like the smallest file size possible of course.

2) I've done some test scans at 1800, 2400, 6400 dpi., where I bring the photo into Motion, and I set Motion's Preferences for 'Large Stills' image import to 'scale to project' (Motion scales down image but keeps original res) or 'do nothing' (Motion supposedly brings in image as is).

With the exception of 1800dpi, on both of the settings above, Motion puts up the error message:

"This media is too large to render at full resolution, and will be shown at a lower quality. The maximum size is 5016x5016"

Then it brings in the image (which still looks good to my eye).

Which leads me to ask:

A) What is the scary 'lower quality' mentioned in the error message? How do I figure out what it is in terms of resolution?

B) Does it even matter for my purposes? (i.e. is the 'lower quality' still good enough for HD broadcast)? If it's an issue, what should I do to address this (lower dpi scan, etc.)?


3) Finally, has anyone compared photomotion/MG for DVCPRO HD 1080i60 in Motion and AE? Which is better?

Many thanks once again!

dpi is meaningless for video - all that matters is the number of pixels.

Motion's warning is coming up because you are using a still with more pixels than your graphics card can process.

You should scan at the lowest resolution that will allow you to zoom in as far as you need without going over 100% scale in any app - AE, Motion, FCP, doesn't matter. What that translates to for your scanner depends on the size of the source photo and how much zooming you are going to do.

If you won't zoom at all, you just need 1920x1080 pixels for what you are doing.