How to get the canvas quality the same as the viewer

[David Bogie]

IN addition to what everyone else has said, the Viewer is a QT Player and it will play almost anything you computer can play. The Canvas is a down-rez window representation of the timeline’s settings and your Mac’s processed output, which may be completely different from your source files as seen in the Browser or Viewer.

If you bring a high rez file into a DV timeline, your Mac has to work really hard to not only reduce it to fit the settings but then it also has to process it to fit the little window of the Canvas and to push it to your video output, if one is available.

Yours is a common misperception of how FCP works.

bogiesan

[Andrzej Goulding]

Thanks for your help.

The whole movie is actually made up of still images moving about. And they were a very high resolution. I am just worried that I am losing a lot of the quality of the original image.

But I have just found the solution to my probs.

In the export settings I just changed the codec to uncompressed 16 bit, and I am getting the sharpness of the original images in the movie.

FAB.

Morph

[Andrzej Goulding]

I am just starting to actually realise the differences between the canvas and viewer, etc…. properly.
I guess the only way I can really edit something is to be able to watch the cuts and transitions at real time, and the only way for my computer to be able to do that is to cut the quality of the video so I can see it, which is what the canvas does.

Thanks for all your help and replies.

Morph

[Steve Eisen]

A very inexpensive solution is to connect any TV monitor to your system. All you need is a Firewire based camera and some RCA cables.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Director-At-Large
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Andrzej Goulding]

You know, I might actually be able to hook something like that up.
I have the camera, the tv and the firewire cable. Just need the rca cables, but I must have some lying around somewhere…..
Cheers

Morph

[Jeremy Garchow]

If you are working in dv, this should work great, if you are working in anything else but dv, FCP will ‘downres’ whatever it’s playing out through firewire and it might look kind of previewy. Previewy, Previewy. Had to say that out loud three times.

As long as your timeline is dv, outputting through firewire to a CRT is about as good as it’s going to look.

Jeremy

[Chris Poisson]

Morph,

That’s great you’ve made some progress, but understand, what you’re looking at is STILL not an accurate measure of what you have, that is, if it’s destined for TV. If you’re just going to the Web, your fine, but broadcast or DVDs, you still need a monitor.

Have a wonderful day.

[Andrzej Goulding]

Yeah, my timeline is DV, so it should work.
Cheers

Morph

[Chris Poisson]

Jeremy,

Was it always the case that FCP could, or would, downres through Firewire?

I seem to recall it could not do this or do it very efficiently in earlier versions, no?

Reason I’m asking is that I am running my laptop through a DV deck to get a picture to my monitor, and when I send an 8bit timeline to it it plays okay, but it’s very jagged on sharp edges. Seems my BM and AJA cardss have spoiled me on playback!

Have a wonderful day.

[Andrzej Goulding]

Mentioning jaggy lines brings me to another topic.
My exported quicktime has jagged lines on straight edges. Are there any antialias settings when exporting the movies like you get in 3D programs to get rid of this?

Morph