downloaded.tif files – need to clean them up in FCP

[David Roth weiss]

Not enough info Frank. What are the pixel dimensions of the original stills? Also, conversion to jpeg may have made them look better to you eye for one reason or another, but that conversion comes at a price, which is another compression hit to your photo. You’d be better off converting to PNG or TGA — they are larger files, but they don’t automatically involve compression, which is unavoidable when converting to jpeg.

DRW

[Frank Cervarich]

All of the tiff pics are square pixel aspect. They range in size from 6282×4891 to 6359×5022 to 6336×4956. I must admit I’m lost with this. Do I need some form of software to convert these files to some other format? If I do, what software would that be? In a word, I need help solving this problem. I don’t even know if I’ve given you all the info you need to help me. Thanks for whatever thoughts you can offer

[Debe]

Those files are waaaay to huge for FCP to deal with reasonably.

They need to be optimized for use in FCP, using ideally either Photoshop or GIMP. Photoshop is pretty expensive. GIMP is open source, so it’s freeware, but it requires you to install the X11 component from your original system install disks to run it. (If you find you like it and use it, it’s nice to contribute to the open source project that created it. It might be technically shareware. I’m not sure. It will let you know when you download it. Google is a great place to start.) GIMP is great if you don’t need to trade images with a Photoshop user. There are some limitations it has in general with respect to compatibility with FCP, but if you are simply re-sizing full screen images, it will suffice.

I have always had access to both the above programs, so I’ve never had to investigate other options. I don’t know if Graphic Converter or even iPhoto will let you re-size an image. That would be the free, and likely already installed option for you, as well, if either one will let you re-size.

They should be no larger than you actually need them to be. If you’re doing moves, figure out how close you need to be and how fast they need to move, but get them down to at most 3x raster. 2x is usually sufficient, and I usually find 1.5x works for most of the situations I encounter. You can push it larger than 3x, but it will run you the risk of FCP choking.

debe

[David Roth weiss]

Frank,

The stills are huge, which isn’t all bad, in the sense that its easier and better to scale down then up. But, they are way to large to work with in FCP, unless you’re planning on zooming all the way in to extreme close-ups of the pores on people’s faces…

So, you’ll have to have someone with Photoshop resize the stills for you. In this case they would simply resize down to about 20% of the current size, and save these copies of the originals as PNG or TGA. That would give you plenty of room to make moves on the stills, but will leave you with managable file sizes that FCP won’t mind, and most important of all, zero compression. Lots of people do use JPEGs, which are smaller in size, but I prefer to use the other uncompressed formats when working from pristine uncompressed stills, which your stills sound like.

After resizing you’ll bring then into FCP and size them or animate them on the timeline in the motion tab. And, you’ll have to render them when done to see the full quality, which should be superb.

Good luck,
DRW