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Animating Stills in FCP Studio 2 – Wavy watery look HELLLLLLLP!
Hi Everyone,
I’m having a heck of a time animating some stills for a slideshow I’m doing in FCP Studio 2. What’s making me crazy is that I’ve done tons of slideshow animations in FCP and NEVER had this problem before. P.S. I searched the Cow and even Larry Jordan’s site but am not having any luck solving this problem. Here’s the deal…
I’m using digital photos that are all from one camera (a very good camera) instead of old pictures that I’ve scanned and when I try to animate the photos, they come out distorted looking like they’re shimmery like water. They’re huge at 10 inches wide by 6 inches tall so I tried to reduce the resolution from 350 to 72 and the width to 850 pixels across but they just look like blurry garbage. First, before you respond, know that I’ve also done the following so far with no luck in fixing them….
– Added Gaussian blurs of .1 .3 .4 .5 and .6
– Added a regular blur filter in fcp
– resized the images to be less than 1000 pixels across in photoshop
– resized the dpi from 350 to 72
– imported them as jpegs, tiffs, pngs and picts
– even recropped them and saved them as bicubit smoother tiffs and pngs and picts
– added a 1 pixel motion blurI’ve even gone so far as to make hard copy prints of the photos and scan them in the old fashioned way that always worked for me in the past. Still, wavy & watery lines.
I get that there’s too much detail in the photos but I can’t make them workable. Any suggestions guys? This is such a small part of a huge project I’m working on and I’ve spent weeks remaking and retrying the sequence with the different variables above.
Any suggestions you can offer would sure be appreciated. I can’t be the only one doing moving photo slideshows here so I’m really hoping someone has the answer.
Thanks for reading Everyone!
Best,
Toni @ TONICKToni @ TONICK
http://www.tonickproductions.com
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo IMAC
w/500GB Internal HD
running MAC OS X 10.4.10
(always updated to current version)
2 LaCie 500 GB HD’s firewired to it
Running FCP Studio 2
Use Canon GL2 to shoot and digitize footage -
11 Replies
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This may sound elemental, but do you have “Full” checked in the render dropdown?
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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You never consulted me! You need to render your timeline completely and view on an external NTSC monitor.
FYI, you missed a good time at NAB.
Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Board of Directors
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group -
Toni,
This may help. Have you added any color correction filters to the photos within Final Cut? I’ve found that when I color correct in Final Cut and not Photoshop, it becomes very watery and jittery no matter WHAT I do to the image.
Color correct in Photoshop first, bring it into Final Cut and do your regular move. It worked for me.
Hope this helps,
Peter Baker
http://www.1060creative.com -
Hi David, Steve & Peter,
Thanks so much for your suggestions. Unfortunately, David, I already have full checked in the render drop down but it was worth a try. Sorry Steve, I rendered the entire timeline out and it still looks really terribly wavy and unacceptable and thanks Peter so much for the info on filters in fcp, so far no progress.
I’ve been trying to post this thank you to you guys and update but there was some weirdness with the cow sign on making me give my full name but not letting me access my account to revise it to satisfy this new requirement. After a couple of unresponded to emails in the last 24 hours, I just gave up and created this new account linked to another email account I have. Just didn’t want you to think I was ungrateful for the help because I super appreciate it ☺
Tonight I resized some of the photos and pasted them into NTSC preset new photoshop files and then imported them into FCP and replaced them and rendered them on a test timeline and it’s just as bad as ever. It’s crazy! I have so done photo tributes like this tons of times (and with much worse photos) but can’t figure out why these are turning out so unacceptable.
I don’t know if this is worth mentioning but when I was rescaling the images in Photoshop (you know, highlighting the layer in the palette doing edit>transform >scale and holding down the shift key as I resized from a corner) the image made the same sort of “watery” effect as I resized it) so I’m wondering if there’s something I should do in Photoshop to minimize the detail without completely blurring the shots.
So I went back to photoshop, opened my originals and saved them using layers and actually hand cutting out the backgrounds, raising them to another layer and blurring the heck out of them (while keeping my subjects in focus), then recropping the photos, applying an ntsc filter and reimporting them. Still, bad wavy images when I move the photos.
Again, any suggestions will be super welcome and thanks again for your attempts to help me resolve this one.
Toni Carey
Aka Toni @ TONICK
http://www.tonickproductions.comToni Carey
formerly Toni @ TONICK
http://www.tonickproductions.com
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo IMAC
w/500GB Internal HD
running MAC OS X 10.4.11
(always updated to current version)
1 LaCie 500 GB & 1 LaCie 1TB HD’s firewired to it
Running FCP Studio 2
Use Canon GL2 to shoot and digitize footage -
Toni,
Sorry it didn’t work out. I have had problems with photos, and my final step is to go to After Effects and animate in there. But of course, you may not know After Effects. Have you tried to do them in Motion? I don’t know the program very well, but that may work.
– Peter
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Thanks Peter. I’m going to have to try Motion — man, nothing like learning a new program under a deadline eh? Super thanks for the help and suggestions! P.S. Your website is AWESOME!
Best,
ToniToni Carey
formerly Toni @ TONICK
http://www.tonickproductions.com
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo IMAC
w/500GB Internal HD
running MAC OS X 10.4.11
(always updated to current version)
1 LaCie 500 GB & 1 LaCie 1TB HD’s firewired to it
Running FCP Studio 2
Use Canon GL2 to shoot and digitize footage -
Well, thank you sir. It feels great to get good feedback from guys in the industry.
And good luck on Motion! Here’s a quick tour of what you need to do:
Use File Browser to see what file you need (upper left tab)
Drag it to the canvas window
“Add Behavior” – “Grow/Shrink”
“Add Filter” – Gaussian Blur for hi-res photos
Use the slider on “Scale To” for where you want the still to END UP. You should be able to change them as it is moving.…and that should be it. Holler if you have any more questions.
– Peter
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Hey Peter,
I can’t thank you enough for your help and the quick Motion lesson — I know it’s gonna save me a ton of time and head scratching! I’ll check in if I get stuck again and super thanks for the offer of additional advice if necessary!
Best to you!
ToniToni Carey
formerly Toni @ TONICK
http://www.tonickproductions.com
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo IMAC
w/500GB Internal HD
running MAC OS X 10.4.11
(always updated to current version)
1 LaCie 500 GB & 1 LaCie 1TB HD’s firewired to it
Running FCP Studio 2
Use Canon GL2 to shoot and digitize footage -
I know this post is old but I do have an answer to the watery pics…I just figured it out! Write back the post if you still need info… Mike
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Hi Mike,
I would love to know what you found out about the wavy watery look and how to fix it. Thanks for posting!
Best,
Toni CareyToni @ TONICK
http://www.tonickproductions.com
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo IMAC
w/500GB Internal HD
running MAC OS X 10.4.10
(always updated to current version)
2 LaCie 500 GB HD’s firewired to it
Running FCP Studio 2
Use Canon GL2 to shoot and digitize footage
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