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Continued & endless graphics hell.
I’ve seen it here many times before….I still have the problem. Imported graphics with alpha channels look great until rendered, then suck. They always look horrible once they are moved on the raster. Turn field dominance to NONE and they look beautiful but naturally any effects generated by FCP then get jumpy. As long as you’re not using any digital effects or wipes you can go with NONE on the field dominance setting and everything looks great including the logo graphic I imported.
Couple things:
Yes I am looking at everything on an NTSC monitor.
Yes I have prepped the graphics properly (720×540 convert to 720×480)
Yes the white levels are set properly.
Yes my RT settings are “Safe RT”, Scrub HQ, Playback set to dynamic or high, recorde to tape set to FULL.
Yes my Video Processing tab Motion Filter Quality is set to Best.
Yes I’ve tried very codec on the planet.
Yes I’m parking everything on even numbers in the motion “center”.The footage is DV, I’m working with FCP 5.0 on 10.3.9 on a G5 with Kona LH.
Yesterday we had the problem with a client logo on stuff shot Beta SP in an uncompressed 10 bit timeline. I set the field dominance to NONE and that project, and its graphics, went out the door looking fantastic…but there were no digital moves (I’m using a 3D simulation “swing” on my segment transitions in the DV project) so hence no jumpy issues on this Beta SP project.
Frankly, I’m ready to tell the client that he must choose between crappy stairstepped logos or crappy jumpy transitions. There’s nothing left to do, it seems, and the problem comes and goes.
I know people are saying they never have problems with any graphics at any point under any circumstances….but my conclusion is that its a crap shoot with FCP and client logos. They look great until field rendered and then they go to hell fast. These logos are FINE. They should drop right in and be perfect. Maybe they will tomorrow and I can run a quick DVD and get rid of this project.
I’m at a point where I’m not sure why I’m even posting this, other than to vent because I’ve been through it all before. Its like rolling the dice every day with this system and graphics.
ONCE AGAIN….I AM LOOKING AT AN NTSC MONITOR.
Mike Gorga, Producer/Director
MEGCOMM Film & Video Prod.
800.816.1884 -
8 Replies
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Mike,
Have you tried deleting render files and rerendering the offending graphic. I’ve seen times when FCP does somehow get stuck on one or more graphics, but its always fixable, eventually. I’ve never seen a graphic yet that was permanently fck’ed up.
DRW
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Are you on 5.0 or 5.0.4? This was a problem with the initial release of FCP 5
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Are you sure you’re previewing it on an NTSC monitor?
[sorry, could resist ;)]
Wayne
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I can’t beleive nobody answered this. I found this problem right after FCP 5 came out. The new high end rendering is bugged. At least in some configs. We found the culprit to simply be the new motion rendering. Just go to seqeunce settings and then the video processing tab. Go to the motion filtering pull down (which is new to 5.x) and choose either normal or fastest. I can’t remember which fixes it. I think it’s fastest. I’ve yet to have anything but cruddy results with the best setting. Perhaps in SD or HD. But in DV it’s always looked like it’s not field rendered or the fields are reversed or something.
Hope that works.
Oh, and btw, you should be working at 720×534 (not 540) and then converting to 720×480 if you want to keep the dimensions right.
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According to what I read in many venues, its 540, not 534. Whats the reason? Anybody else doing 534?
Thanks for the Video Processing setting info. I’ll give that a shot. I’m SURE its “Fastest” because we had been using NORMAL and somebody suggested upping that to HIGH. I never tried “fastest”.
Thanks again.
Mike Gorga, Producer/Director
MEGCOMM Film & Video Prod.
800.816.1884 -
No it’s not. It’s a teeny tiny difference, but you can do the algebra. 720×486 is to 720×540 as 720×480 is to 720×533.33333333 (534).
If you want someone like Adobe to back me up, just look at the new file preferences in Photoshop…
720×540 Std. NTSC 601
720×534 Std. NTSC DV/DVDBasically, it comes down to this –
SD (720×486) is a non square equivalent of a 4:3 image. 4/3=1.333
Other numbers that get the same math result are 648/486=1.333 and 720/540=1.333So since 720×486 is a non sq version of 648×486, then 720×480 is a non square version of 648×480 since the only thing different is that there are 6 less horizontal lines. 648/480=1.35 as does 720/534. The 6 missing scan lines are added upon analog output as black to regain the 4:3 ratio required for a NTSC signal.
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“We found the culprit to simply be the new motion rendering. Just go to seqeunce settings and then the video processing tab. Go to the motion filtering pull down (which is new to 5.x) and choose either normal or fastest. I can’t remember which fixes it. I think it’s fastest.”
You are absolutely RIGHT sir! Its “Fastest (linear)”. I had been running in NORMAL, then Walt Biscardi suggested going up to HIGH. I never thought to kick it down to FASTEST, but that fixed the problem.
Thanks so much. Great catch, BTW.
Best to you and thanks to all who took the time to respond.
Sincerely,
Mike Gorga, Producer/Director
MEGCOMM Film & Video Prod.
800.816.1884 -
[Bret Williams] “The new high end rendering is bugged.”
based on my observations
the ‘best’ motion rendering in most cases is worse than ‘fast’:
it seems to be nothing else than ‘fast’ with an additional ‘unsharp mask’ filter applied,
which introduces a lot of artefacts, especially visible at titles and other high contrast details.so it depends what one wants.
but ‘best’ is defenitely not a ‘high end’ scaling algorythm.kurt
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