Graphics and Text Quaility Issue

[Chris Poisson]

David,

Assuming you are viewing this stuff on a good monitorn not your FCP windows, you should check all your settings, quality settings and make sure you do a final render. When you go to make a DVD, if you go directly from your FCP timeline to Compressor, all your graphics, effects and transitions will be sent directly to your mpeg file, bypassing DV compression. The resulting DVD is noticeably better than one made from a QT movie, plus it will automatically have compression markers so your motion footage will be smooth as silk.

I incorporate Animation movies from AE all the time, and they always look perfect.

[David Cohen]

I will certainly give that a shot and use Compressor direct. Just out of curiosity, what should my final settings be in FCP?
Thanks
-D-

[Chris Poisson]

Well,

Let’s say your project is DV based, so it’s a DV easy setup, but when you use compressor in this way your graphics will look perfect.

[David Cohen]

Great. Than you very much, sounds liek this will solve the problem.
Cheers
-D-

[Kevin Monahan]

What will solve your problem is to set up FCP properly with a good video monitor. It appears that you are not using one.

And people that don’t check their work as they work on a proper video monitor will experience this confusion. The Canvas will not show you the true quality of your rendered output. However, if it looks good on the video monitor, it will be fine for output. You see, it doesn’t matter if you’re going straight to DVD or the web, you still need to use your video monitor as you work to check the quality of your graphics for output. That alone is reason enough to work with a properly set up FCP system. FCP is more than an app, it indeed is a system. If it’s not set up properly, you’ll introduce confusion to the mix: not good.

Likewise, an exported QT will often be displayed in low res, even though it exists as a high quality output file. It will look great if you enable high quality playback (CMD +J in QT), if you need to have a look at that quality. Even easier to just look at the video monitor, as I earlier said. Indeed, this confuses the editor that does not know about the different quality that QT can display – again, a low quality appearance by default, while the higher quality is actually used for output and encodes.

Your final gotcha is that you also have to render with the dark green FULL bar checked in the Sequence>Render menu. Also, the RT pop up must be in Safe RT, High Quality and Full Frame rate. These items get by a lot of people.

Hope this helps you understand how FCP works regarding displaying video graphics.

Kevin Monahan
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
fcpworld.com

[David Cohen]

Thanks, that was some info i did not realise. I ahev a nice NTSC pro brodcats monitor i ned to get out of storage. Cheers

Oh, BTW I am having some trouble going out of FCP directly into Compressor. I pick my presets thn it says FCp is busy when i try to preview and fails upon bacth. Any tips on why its is behaving odd?
Thanks again guys, i really appreciate it.
-D-

[David Cohen]

I have used an alteranate method, by rendering a non-self contained QT and pulling that into Compressor. It worked, only there are video hits toward the end of the clip. Ugh, sorry new to compressor. Thoughts?
-D-