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Stills look ugly in FCP 5 but were great in 4.5
I have both OSX Tiger and Panther (2 bootable drives) available on my G5. In a project originally created in FCP 4.5 the still images have jagged lines (like pronounced interlace edges) when I open it in FCP 5. All the stills look beautiful in FCP 4.5. What gives? I tried all three of the new motion render qualities but can’t get anything as smooth as before. What am I missing? Thanks in advance for any help!
G5 dual 2.0
2.5 GB ram
OSX 10.4.1
Final Cut Studio -
17 Replies
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This is one of those, “it’s a feature ot a bug things” So many people complained that the motion scaling looked so good that they actually thought that the still frame that FCP showed you was what was going to tape. SO THE FCP team has turned this feature off. Now when you zoom into a hig rez picture (to find a specific part of the frame or rezie it) the picture gets so ratty you can not see it. It is as if you are always working in a 1/3 resolution in After effects. I think this was not a good way to go. The bigger drag is that the sequence is actually telling you that THIS IS FULL RESOLUTION. They should have at least made it a dark green line effect that means it needs rendereing. FULL RT should not mean I NEED TO RENDER YOU.
To me this is a big fat drag.
Please encourage Apple to give us an option or choice that is more condusive to an individual workflow. This one was one of the biggest letdowns for me in going to 5.0
ONthe other hand the motion scaling is a much cleaner render now. Maybe even too clean. But I do not understand the logic of making every still file an automatic render, when it was not before.
David
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I posted this a while back about this to illustrate the problem.
Here is a Dynamic RT problem with still images.
I have noticed that a timeline showing a light green line which used to be fully rendered RT easily played out by FCP is now showing less than desirabe quality compared to rendered portions of the timeline.
Try this test: Load two high resolution still image (tif, jpeg etc)
Drop the images into a timeline.(withRT set to high the timeline has a light green line on it)
Put a motion move on the first image with keyframe A@45 and keyframe B@100 (I was using 1600×1200 jpeg file)
Place a dissolve between the shots and render only the dissolve.
Go to the headframe of the dissolve and the arrow back one frame to compare the quality betweent the two. You should notice a vast difference.In 4.5HD there would be no distinction between these two frame with the same settings but somehow we last this ability now. FCP 5.0 does not even give you a choice to see the high rez image when stopped on the still frame, which is very useful for picking out detail in high rez still images. This was a major bonus in all previous versions of Final Cut..
go here to see the stills
https://homepage.mac.com/scarlettfilms/PhotoAlbum9.html
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As a long time FCP user (since 1.0) I have to call a spade a spade and say that this is unacceptable. There really isn’t a setting that will change this back?
I challenge anyone to find any reasonable opinion in favor of this ‘feature’
-Christopher Johnson
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Sorry David, but in my case, motion or resizing on stills looks bad even after rendering, unless I use “fastest” under Motion Quality Setings. I wish Apple would just focus on giving us the things we ask for, instead of fixing what ain’t broke all the time.
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This is a good time to use the “send user feedback” built right into the FCP software. With enouhg requests they will respond.
David
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This seems to be on surface at least, a field dominance issue. Setting Field Dominance to NONE should help. I’m about to call this a bug.
Michael Horton
lafcpug
https://www.lafcpug.org -
Are you running the latest QT 7.0.1 update? I thought I heard that this was a quicktime issue and the .1 update fixed many of the problems with still images.
So far all of my graphics are coming in very cleanly to FCP 5.0.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Yes, I’m running 7.0.1. The field dominance solution that Michael suggests works great for scaling of images, but as soon as you add motion or transitions, it goes south.
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QT 7.0.1 does not fix this.
Try the test on your own.
Import some high rez jpeg files. (froma digital camer or whatever)
Drop one shot in a DV timeline (you will get a light green RT bar telling you this is a full resolution RT)
In the motion tab put a move from 45 to 100 with a couple of key frames
Blade the middle of the 10 second shot and render the first half.
Compare frames 4:29 and 5:00
In FCP 4.5 you would not have seen a difference between these two frames and now you do.
I Like that the render quality is better, just don’t tell me that it is real time. if it shows up a dark green line then at least I can get away with ot rendersig some true FULL RT light green line stuff.
David
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[walter biscardi] “So far all of my graphics are coming in very cleanly to FCP 5.0.”
I’m with Walter on this one… my graphics are clean. I even took and old 4.5 project, duplicated it three times, and then converted each of the three copies using one of the three different methods. I also brought the files into a native 5.0 project. So, I now have five different versions of the same project, and graphics and titles all look fine in each one of them.
I’m wondering if we need to start posting what machine, graphics card, ram config we all use so we can see if there is some commonality with those who are experiencing this problem?
Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.
mitch@insightproductions.com
http://www.insightproductions.com
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