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Activity Forums Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy Maintaining dimensions when exporting stills in Final Cut Pro?

  • Maintaining dimensions when exporting stills in Final Cut Pro?

    Posted by Shaun Lewis on August 10, 2013 at 2:09 pm

    Hello everyone,

    So I’m quite a novice when it comes to editing software and I already am encountering a problem.

    While trying to export a time-lapse I created I noticed how the quality of the images decreased and I have no idea why. All I did was import the photos (that were 5184 × 3456 in native dimensions) decrease the duration of each photo to create the effect of a timelapse and attempt to export in MPEG4 H.264.

    For some reason as soon as I pull the images from the bin to the timeline and attempt to export even one lone photo the dimensions go from 5184 × 3456 to around 400×300 which is bloody ridicules quality. Even when I tried to import in 1080×720 the photo would only get stretched and pixelated and would look even worse!
    I am aware that it compresses it while exporting but it takes a grand resolution photo and shrinks it to an unbelievable size. How to I maintain the quality of the photo to at least 1920×1080?? Please help I’m useless with this software!

    (I am using Final Cut Pro 7.0.3)

    Thank you all in advance for your time and help,
    Shaun

    Rafael Amador replied 13 years ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Rafael Amador

    August 12, 2013 at 5:29 am

    That still size is huge.
    FC can’t work with something bigger than (more or less) 3000×2000.
    Even that is very big if you are putting out 1920×1080.
    FC will do the downscaling, and FC is very bad fot that task.

    Go to Photoshop and downscale the picture.
    Don’t make them bigger than 1920×1080, unless you intend to pan/zoom the pictures.
    If you wan’t to put out the original size (if you gonna project at 4K) then you need AE or FCPX.
    Not sure if Motion can do it.
    rafael

  • Shaun Lewis

    August 12, 2013 at 12:21 pm

    Rafael,

    Thank you for the tip but I fear it didn’t work.

    I downsized the images to 1920×1080 and when FCP downscale them again I downsized the images, again, to 1080×720 but encounter the same problem! I tried to open new projects, use different images and even tried After Effects but I’m useless with it and have no idea how to operate it as an editing software. I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing wrong!

    As soon as I drag the images to the timeline they get re-sized to about 400×300 which is just crazy! Is it perhaps a problem with the settings? I have Adobe Premier, After Effects and Avid Media Composer but I’m just so useless with all of them compared to FCP and encounter different, more annoying problems with each.

    Shaun

  • Rafael Amador

    August 14, 2013 at 1:56 pm

    [Shaun Lewis] ” downsized the images to 1920×1080 and when FCP downscale them again I downsized the images, again, to 1080×720 but encounter the same problem!”
    Sorry, I didn’t notice on your first post that you were editing at 1980×720.
    1920×720 is not an standard size.
    If you want to use that size, you must resize the still to that size in Photoshop, then FC won’t rescale them.
    Edit on a Prores time-line. Once you export a master, convert it to MP4.
    rafael

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