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“Mosquito Noise”/ still image problems in timeline- I’ve tried everything
Hi all,
I am working on a feature that incorporates many still photographs with DV video in the timeline. Most of the stills are in jpeg or tiff formats and roughly half of the images (50 out of 100) are affected by this problem, both jpeg and tiff.
The stills are beautiful in Photoshop and other viwer apps, but when I lay my stills into the FCP timeline, they become funky. They develop chunky, horizontal resolution problems, most noticeable along edges. It’s a lot more broad and softer than usual jagginess or aliasing. They also grow mushy pixelated blobs that most accurately look like “mosquito noise” as found here: https://www.videsignline.com/showArticle.jhtml?printableArticle=true&articleId=180207350
The images look funky as soon as I lay them into the timeline, BUT appear pristine and perfect on an NTSC monitor. The funkiness carries over when I export a QT file or print to tape but only when viewing on a computer display. Again, the still images in the exported QT file or on the tape look great when viewed on an NTSC monitor, but horrible when viewed on a computer display.
I’ve been working on this problem for a couple days now and have tried many things:
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Optimizing stills before import
– resolution, whether 300dpi or 72 dpi doesn’t seem to be a factor, and resizing makes no difference. In fact, a particular image will look messed-up in the exact same way,despite any size/ resolution manipulations I perform in PS prior to import.Adjusting render settings (and then rendering)
– Everything to full
– Sequence settings to Safe RTConverting sequence and stills to 8-bit uncompressed and 10-bit uncompressed
Applying filters
– Gaussian blur
– De-interlace
– FlickerReimporting the files, reconnecting them
Adjusting the position of the stills to maintain whole/ even postion settings in the motion tab
Increasing the still cache allotted to FCP
Changing the pixel aspect-ratio of the stills
—————————The key elements seem to be that:
1) the images are natively fine and only become funky when placed into the timeline
2) the images look perfect on an NTSC monitor and horrible on a computer display.[/b] I know only a fraction of the DV stream is used to display an image in the canvas- that isn’t the problem, because the poor quality carries over to output, whether QT or tape (and again, the carried-over images on the QT file or tape look great on an NTSC monitor, but horrible on a computer display.Anybody have any ideas? Thanks.
-JimDual 2.5ghz G5
Mac OS 10.3.9
FCP 5 -
4 Replies
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[twotimes] “The stills are beautiful in Photoshop and other viwer apps, but when I lay my stills into the FCP timeline, they become funky.”
That’s because they are being ruled by the codec of the timeline you placed the images in. Also, only a low res proxy is used by the Canvas in FCP.
[twotimes] “The images look funky as soon as I lay them into the timeline, BUT appear pristine and perfect on an NTSC monitor. “
If they look good on the video monitor, they’ll look the same way when layed back to tape. I would not worry. You should always be monitoring the results of your renders on the video monitor.
[twotimes] ” The funkiness carries over when I export a QT file or print to tape but only when viewing on a computer display.”
That’s because you’re still looking at the low-res proxy. It appears that few people know that if you change the quality setting within QT, you can see the higher quality you’d normally see when viewing it on a video monitor. Just go to Window>Show Video Options – drill down to the video controls and check the box that says “high quality”.
Again, it is best to NEVER judge your rendered images on the computer screen EVER….so don’t even go there with a complaint about image quality.
[twotimes] “Again, the still images in the exported QT file or on the tape look great when viewed on an NTSC monitor, but horrible when viewed on a computer display. “
No worries then. As you should never, ever judge rendered images on the computer monitor. That is why you have your NTSC monitor fired up while you work – not after you’ve burned another coaster DVD. It’s too late to make changes then….
[twotimes] “resolution, whether 300dpi or 72 dpi doesn’t seem to be a factor”
Stay with 72 DPI, the target resolution of digital video. This avoids the moire problem of stills that are overly large.
[twotimes] “Adjusting render settings (and then rendering)
– Everything to full
– Sequence settings to Safe RT”So, in the Sequence>Render menus the dark green bar called “FULL” is checked?
You are in Safe RT, but also make sure that you are NOT playing back in “Dynamic” frame playback or for video quality. They should both be set to “FULL”.[twotimes] “Converting sequence and stills to 8-bit uncompressed and 10-bit uncompressed”
You should see some improvement here, but since you likely do not have a video capture card, you could never see it since you cannot view the rendered images in NTSC.
AGAIN, do not judge rendered images on the computer monitor EVER – regardless of the codec.
[twotimes] “Reimporting the files, reconnecting them”
Never heard of that one.
[twotimes] “Adjusting the position of the stills to maintain whole/ even postion settings in the motion tab”
Horizontal X values are all that’s necessary to check.
[twotimes] “Applying filters
– Gaussian blur
– De-interlace
– Flicker”These only help if you have a moire problem. Usually is due to oversized images.
[twotimes] “Changing the pixel aspect-ratio of the stills”
Never heard of that one.[twotimes] “The key elements seem to be that:
1) the images are natively fine and only become funky when placed into the timeline
2) the images look perfect on an NTSC monitor and horrible on a computer display.[/b] I know only a fraction of the DV stream is used to display an image in the canvas.”1. You know why. The codec in the timeline now rules your images. Look in the NTSC monitor: Looks OK? Don’t worry then. All is going according to plan.
2. You know why. You should never trust what you see in the Canvas.
[twotimes] “because the poor quality carries over to output, whether QT”
Well, now you know why this is going on. You are still looking at the low-res proxy. Click the High Quality button and BINGO – high quality image.
[twotimes] “or tape”
I seriously doubt that. The image on tape will look exactly like the version you saw in your NTSC monitor, which you have already said looked fine.
If you have image quality complaints about the codec, then that is a different argument. The DV Codec has 5:1 compression, so if all you have is DV – you are stuck with that compression if you lay back to tape.
If you go to DVD, you can master in a different codec, say DVCPro 50 with much nicer results for your rendered graphics.
So, what did we learn from all this? “STOP judging rendered images on the computer monitor – and TRUST what you see in the NTSC monitor. Have that NTSC monitor powered up at all times as you work.
Hope you have your head wrapped around all the pitfalls.
Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Workshop!
fcpworld.com -
Kevin, thank you for your time and your generous effort. I don’t think you are understanding what I am saying, however, and you are therfore not understanding why this is so baffling.
– I am an experienced FCP user and I always work with an external NTSC studio monitor. The feature has been color corrected by a technician who examined every frame with an HD monitor and noticed nothing wrong there. The problem only exists within a digital environment, after having passed through FCP. It is necessary to correct this as it doesn’t look right when being projected digitally or when viewed on a computer screen/ LCD TV.
– The problem is persisting through output to tape. It happened at the hollywood post-house that output to digiBeta and it is happening with my miniDV setup at home.
– Changing the playback quality to “high” within QT does not help the problem.Part of the problem here is that I have always adhered to the credo of trusting your NTSC monitor, but this problem seems to have betrayed that.
Thanks again for your help so far.
-Jim -
Did the stills originalte ona mac or PC. I have only had real problems with images created in PC apps where sometimes they come up green in the fcp window but fine on the export.
I have had to recreate/resave these images as tiff’s with mac pack bits instead of IBM.
It’s a shot in the dark, but maybe that is it.
David
Peace and Love 🙂
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Thanks David, but no such luck. They were created on a mac.
-Jim
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