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photos turn soft in final cut
I’m somewhat new to Final Cut Pro 4.5 and I have been having some issues with my clips turning soft when a), I rescale a clip (say to remove a boom pole) or b), include a photograph in the sequence.
I know these are two separate forms of image quality loss, but I am looking for answers to both questions. I have combed over the forums for responses to these issues, and people have posted about them, but no one seems to have a solution.
For the photos…
what happens is, i bring the photos into my timeline, they look great, when i play the timeline, they loose their sharpness. They don’t become pixelated, just lose that snap of an in focus shot.
It is not the square vs. rectangular issue. I have converted my photos for import into final cut.
It is not that I am viewing the sequence on a computer monitor, I have made a dvd and viewed it on a regular TV.
It is not that the photos are unrendered, they are.Does anyone have a solution to this? Also, does anyone know of a tutorial on using the “Ken Burns” effect in final cut?
For the rescaling…
when i rescale a clip, there is major quality loss in the clip. It goes soft. is there any way to avoid this?
Any help is truly appreciated. Thanks so much.
jack -
2 Replies
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Hi there. Here are my guess as to what might be troubling you.
First
-what happens is, i bring the photos into my timeline, they look great, when i play the timeline, they loose their sharpness. They don’t become pixelated, just lose that snap of an in focus shot.If you are working in a miniDV sequence on a high resolution monitor the miniDV compression could be what you percieve as image softness.
Second
http://www.kenstone.net has some wonderful FCP tutorials and white papers. I think they might have one on the “Ken Burns” effect.Third
FCP just isn’t as good as Photoshop for rescaling images. If you are going to rescale an image in either app it is important that it be a much higher resolution than normal. My usual guestimate is that you need at least twice the final desired resolution. So if you are going to resize an image to say 640×480 you would need to start with an image at least 1280×960.If any of this is too basic I appologize. And if any one disagrees please let me know.
Good luck
Matt
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I’ll even be more basic.
You must only judge image quality on an external VIDEO monitor, not on the computer monitor.
You must RENDER all effects and photoshop stills to get full quality.
They will “play” at very reduced quality before rendering on some systems, but you must render before output.ANY changing of the size of a video image with virtually ANY digital tool ($1000-$100,000) will degrade the image quality.
But the WORST will always be if you ENLARGE the video image, even by a small percentage.VERY IMPORTANT:
If you re-position graphics or any video image in FCP, make SURE the VERTICAL setting for each KEY-FRAME (start, stop or hold) is always a EVEN INTEGER (Even Whole Number). Examples: 4, not 3 / -144, not -143.27 / 336, not 335.62 / 12 not 11.
The positioning settings/info (as well as many other settings) are found under the “Motion” tab in the Viewer.
Vertical position is the number in the RIGHT window in the area called “Center” (the horizontal position is displayed in the LEFT window).I sometimes forget to check this and I can end up with images that look fuzzy when in-position.
This info applies to re-positioning anything on the Timeline: moving video, freeze-frames, internally-generated titles, and imported graphics.
It can be quite detrimental to the quality of your final output to not double-check this every time you reposition and/or re-size an image.
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