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1800X1200 photo jpeg on FCP timeline
Am working on FCP 7.0.3.
Making a film with only stills. 1800X1200 jpeg.
Can someone help me with the best sequence settings for this project – so that the images are not resized, and are represented at best quality. Have tried many things but even when I use a custom size of 1800X1200 on sequence settings, there is a black band on the left and right of the image. Also, which compressor should one use – Apple pro res HQ/Proxy, or another?
Thanks in advance!SJ
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8 Replies
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The problem that you have is that the size and aspect ratio of those stills do not match any TV format.
Check the pixel aspect ratio of the stills and make sure your sequence matches it. I created a still that was 1800×1200 square pixels and then edited that into a custom 1800×1200 sequence with square pixels and it was fine. ProRes LT would be fine for JPEGS – dont use Proxy.One thing – how do you plan to show this film if its on the web then the custom size wont really matter but if it is on TV DVD or BluRay or a projector then it will as it is not a TV standard and you will get some distortion/black bars.
You may be better off resizing them to 1920×1080 and while you will lose some image you will be in a standard HD TV format and that might save you hassle later.best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv -
Thank you so much for this extremely useful answer.
What I should have said earlier is that this is for a large projection.
Have done a timeline on Apple Pro Res HQ.
But would you still say that LT is better?For now we are just looking at this one projection.
But thanks for the tip about resizing them to 1920×1080 for other displays!SJ
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Hi
ProRes HQ is capable of better quality than LT however you wont really notice the difference with JPEGS.
If you have decent media storage drives, minimum firewire 800 then you should be OK with HQ. But you might get the odd dropped frame. LT is not going to produce such large files and will be less taxing on your system.
Remember don’t try to playback ProRes HQ from a USB drive or a DVD drive on the day – you will need at least a firewire 800 external to handle that.
I would check what happens with the projector in terms of a 1800×1200 image. I would imagine the projector is expecting either a SD (720×576 or 1024×576) or HD (1920×1080 or 1280×720) image so it might distort an 1800×1200 which is much closer to 4×3 in aspect ratio.
I have used PAL frame sizes but same principles apply to NTSC.
I would still be tempted to resize them to a proper TV format, probably 1920×1080 since they are close to that size anyway or at least test what your projector makes of 1800×1200.best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv -
Strange, even on my old Imac I seem to see a difference between LT and HQ, HQ looks better. Maybe because the photos are very good and there’s a lot of detail for the eye to see.
At the risk of pushing your patience, I have more thoughts/questions.
When you say `don’t try to playback ProRes HQ from a USB drive or a DVD drive on the day – you will need at least a firewire 800 external to handle that.’ – do you mean play from a timeline? What I have done is that I’ve made a self contained movie – a QT. Do you feel there is a risk in playing that too?
Also, we have seen these photographs projected in a normal slide show (not through FCP and before we started working on the film) and they look great, no cropping,no distortion, only simple black bands above and below, perfect image resolution. The challenges all started when we got into FCP.
I would tend to go with your advice about 1920×1080, to be safe and to be open to all sorts of displays. Am exploring, still.
Thanks very much for your time and interest.
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ProRes HQ is better quality than ProRes LT – on footage from say a DSLR you cannot see the difference. If you can see a difference with your JPEGS then use what is best.
Assuming you are going to use ProRes HQ, at the end of the process you will have a self contained ProRes HQ Quicktime Movie. ProRes HQ requires fairly fast drives to play it back, firewire 800 is a minimum for editing.
So if you were to copy your file onto a USB stick or a DVD as a file and try to play it back directly you may find it stutters. You need to play it back from a hard drive.Yes once you are in the realms of television the rules on picture sizes change slightly as devices like projectors and monitors are expecting fixed size images so anything that does not conform to tv spec is possibly going to get cropped and or distorted.
best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv -
Converted the Pro Res HQ mov (through QT 7). For a 7 min segment the file size went from 11gb to 412mb. Linear PCM, H.264.
It looks quite good unless my eyes deceive me.
Would you suggest I use this?Thanks!
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Dont use H264 to edit with – its not a frame based codec and will give you all kinds of problems.
As a delivery codec or for your file for final viewing it will be fine. So yes if your happy with the quality go for that.best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv -
Thank you!
Will remember that.
Gratefully….
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