• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  FCP7 (w/ Snow Leopard) Scales Frame Grabs to Compensate for Pixel Aspect Ratio

  Posted by David Heidelberger on October 20, 2009 at 5:59 pm

  I just exported my first FCP7/Snow Leopard frame grabs (using Export>Quicktime Conversion>Still Image) to TIFF files. The footage is DVCPROHD 720p. Some were exported from clips loaded in the viewer, some from clips in a DVCPROHD 720p timeline. The results are horribly blocky and aliasy. I presume this is from FCP stretching the stills to compensate for the pixel aspect ratio. Instead of 960×720, the stills are 1280×720.

  I seem to remember this being introduced as a “convenient” feature in version 6.0 or so, and due to the poor quality and public outcry, they switched it back (to exporting 960×720 stills for DVCPROHD footage) for 6.0.1, right? Something like that?

  And I think I’ve exported stills from FCP 7 using Leopard with no problem, so I’m wondering if this is a Snow Leopard thing (I did a fresh install).

  I also tried dropping the clips into a ProRes, 1280×720 sequence and those frame grabs exported just fine, so it’s definitely some issue with the FCP Quicktime Conversion scaling.

  Anyway, word of warning: we seem to be back to whatever issue it was we had in the past with frame grabs, unless there’s a setting I’m missing. I’d be curious if someone could try this in Leopard and see if it works properly there. I’ll file a bug report later today.

  Here are some comparisons:
  https://www.davidheidelberger.com/stillbug/

  – David

  David Heidelberger replied 16 years, 6 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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