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You are here: MacNN Forums > Enthusiast Zone > Art & Graphic Design > FCP: Animating scale on stills results in crappy images

FCP: Animating scale on stills results in crappy images
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Lebodde
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Mar 31, 2005, 03:35 PM
 
I am editing a video in FCP4 which includes a lot of still images. I create or modify those in Photoshop and then import them in FCP. I always create them at a higher resolution than what they will cover on the screen in order to make sure there is enough details.

When I bring them in my timeline and scale them, they look fine. But if I animate the scaling (for zooming in or out) then it looks like the program goes into a "low rez" mode and all hard edges start to alias like crazy.

My sequence settings are set to 100% of frame rate and resolution and I have Motion Blur and Frame blending turned on. I am editing and outputting at DV rez. I don't know where else to look...

Does anyone know what could create this problem and how to fix it?

Thank you for any help.

Lebodde
     
MountainMac
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Mar 31, 2005, 07:05 PM
 
Set Playback Video Quality to High.

Are you watching this on an external NTSC monitor or on the screen? It will look a lot different (and by "different" I mean "better") on an external monitor.

You also probably want to turn Motion Blur off, since there's no actual motion (meaning motion blur works a lot better if you apply it to actual interlaced video).

MM
Plato--what's a "Chickie Run"?
     
Lebodde  (op)
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Mar 31, 2005, 08:30 PM
 
Thanks MM.

When you say Playback Video Quality to High, where is that option? The User prefs have Audio playback quality but I don't see Video. But in any case I don't caer too much about what happens while playing the video from within FCP {which is low rez because it's real time}. The prob I care about is that it shows in the rendered movie which I watch through QT player.

I do watch it on the Mac monitor so I will try and see if watching on an external NTSC job would look better (because of the interlacing I take it?)

I still don't understand why a prefectly good quality still with plenty of resolution would look so aliased as soon as you zoom in a little, though (again, assuming that the rez is high enough)

Thank you.
     
Lebodde  (op)
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Apr 1, 2005, 01:07 PM
 
MM,

Sure enough I finally got my movie burned to DVD and watched it on an NTSC monitor. Most aliasing artifacts are gone. It's almost as if FCP renders in interlace mode.

Does this mean that scaled still images simply can't be viewed on a computer monitor ??? (Unless you don't mind the horrible edges of course). The worst offender are elements of type done in Photoshop.

Thanks
     
MountainMac
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Apr 3, 2005, 08:40 PM
 
In the RT dropdown menu at the top left of the timeline, you can set "Playback Video Quality" to high.

Choose Safe RT from the same menu as well; it will force you to render everything, but the rendered files should be smoother than a realtime preview.

MM
Plato--what's a "Chickie Run"?
     
Spoffo
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Apr 28, 2005, 01:26 AM
 
Even with playback video quality set to high, you'll usually see a significant drop in resolution as soon as you apply any motion to a still. Final Cut has to do this to provide real-time playback while you're working. The amount of resolution reduction depends on the processor power of your Mac. As you discovered, however, this does not apply when you output the finished product. The resolution will be essentially that of the original stills. Depending on specific still and the motion you apply, you may see a little line twitter in the finished product. At that point, you can usually get rid of it with a very light aplication of motion blur.
     
   
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