I am absolutely amazed…

[Gunner Jones]

I see none of these problems–but I have a lot of experience with the program. I gotta say bro, you are probably overlooking some crucial stuff….

First of all, are you aware that the Canvas is not where you see the quality of your renders?
Do you have a video monitor hooked up? How does the image look there?

Gunner

[John Grilli]

Editing on FCP for a week? Final Cut Pro is a great piece of resolution independent editing software that is very flexible. With flexibility comes responsibility! Who is pushing the buttons?

[Shane Ross]

Please also be aware that FCP is primarily a Non-Linear Editor, designed to work with video footage. The fact that it does moves with stills is an added bonus (although I doubt you see it that way right now).

After Effects is the more appropriate program for doing moves on stills, and is the one I use all the time, over both FCP and Avid (even though Avid has this plugin that now allows for moves on original stills, not just imported media files).

FCP is not doing what YOU want it to do…and you are using it for something other than it’s primary function.

And please, by all means, judge your footage on an external NTSC monitor or TV…NEVER by the image in the CANVAS or VIEWER windows.

[Gunner Jones]

Shane,
The image quality and scaling is vastly improved in FCP 5. If I can stay in FCP and get the job done, then I don’t need to hop out to AE. It looks like I will be able to stay in FCP more often now.

[The202]

Hey Gunner, John and Shane.

I started out to respond to you all individually but your replies came in so quickly I’ll combine them.

Gunner,

Oddly the canvas is where my images appear the best and yes I have a broadcast monitor connected through a DV deck. I would normally agree it is most certainly an over-looked setting but I have yet to replicate a motion or static image scenario with a good or bad result consistently. Also it would seem I am not alone after reading two threads started by Chris Poisson and Dave Simon.

John,

With flexibility comes responsibility! Who is pushing the buttons?…I have no idea what that means.

A little background. I have worked in editing, compositing and post for years. First on an A B linear configuration, then a hardware based Media100, and now I routinely use a NewTek video toaster and a PC-only Premiere system that works pretty well…all at work. My job is medical post production and I have held every position from surgical photog. to a broadcast engineer…being the Jack of All Trades is a necessity in my field. This is my first FC system, I installed it at my house in a very nicely equipped home studio.

Shane,

I routinely use a simple yet very effective, motion keyframe feature within Premiere Pro, in fact with the release of PP 1.5 I was finally able to drop after effects for this function, the quality was just as good and although a batch rendering system does not exist it is still fairly quick.

I guess I must have really sounded like I was dumping on FCP and the people who use it, let me assure that is not the case. I spent a great deal of time deciding on my next NLE, I looked at, tested and compared AVID, NewTek, Vegas, Premiere and of course FCP. My final decision came down to DVD Studio, SoundTrack Pro and Motion. FCP5 was simply part of that entire solution.

So I’ll keep on this problem, by no less than $4K, I am committed to make this work. In the mean time I put my PC back to work rendering AE animations and I installed AVID free DV where I have all the animation place holders loaded…and all the static images are already in place…looking GREAT!

[Michael Del rossi]

I’ve done slide shows in the past and have not had the problems you seem to be experiencing.
Why don’t you popst a sample of your project and a sample of your exported movie, along with your settings.
are the stills large enough?
Have you tried Motion?
mdr

[Arnie Schlissel]

[the202] “So far my best result is to simply turn OFF Final Cut Pro Effects handling and go for a straight render of every animation.”

Ok, let me get this straight: you were previewing your moves in RT, & the previews weren’t as good as you wanted the final product? Yeah, well, that’s why their previews. RT saves time, if you understand the workflow. It pisses you off if you don’t. Also, you don’t mention if you have a video monitor hooked up. You’ll never get good results without having one hooked up properly.

I’ve done dozens of photomontages with FCP versions 3-4.5 (haven’t upgraded yet), & they look really good when the clients send in good looking pictures. When the client’s send in crap, well, they don’t look as good.

You indicated that you’re a bit confused about the various RT options. Have you cracked the manuals & done some controlled tests to help yourself figure this feature out? You didn’t say what kind, if any, video editing experience you have, so I can’t give any advice other than to read the manuals & do the tutorials. The thick, multi-volume nature of the manual should be an indicator that you can’t just turn on the CPU & expect to be cutting Star Wars.

As to FCP crashing, well, it doesn’t crash for me. I don’t think I’ve had a crash for a month or more, & I’m running the same Mac as you are. If FCP is crashing on a regular basis, there’s a reason why, & you’ll need to do some trouble shooting.

Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com

[Tom Matthies]

Something is badly amiss here. FCP should (does) handle motion on stills and looks very good to boot. Something is not right.
Are you rendering your timeline? FCP will attempt to play your timeline in realtime by dropping the resolution in order to play the motion paths. It will seem play without rendering, but you still NEED to render it. At times, it seems like FCP will not let you render. It “tells” you that it doesn’t need to render. Oh, but it sure does. Go under your Sequence pulldown menu and make sure that, under the three render pulldown choices, that ALL of the colors are checked, just to be safe. Change your RT settings on the upper left of the timeline to “safe”. (I’m in FCP 4.5 right now). Now, highlight every clip (CMD-“A”) and go back up to the Sequence pulldown and select Render All>Video. (hope I’m right…I’m going from memory on this one)
Anyhow, that should “force” CP to render your timeline. Things should look good now. I do “pan ‘n scan” all the time, and FCP does do a good job with it. I’m assuming that your stills are at least 720×480 for DV? Bigger can be better. Too big can actually degrade the finished product since you start to get all kinds of interframe flicker.
I’m in the process of loading a new G5 with FCP5 right now, but haven’t gotten to the point of being able to do an actual project yet. I’m told that FCP5 should handle this kind of sub-pixel rendering even better than FCP4.5. At least, that’s what they say…
Your finished video should look very good. Don’t get too discouraged at FCP yet. We also have two Avid Symphonys that do a lousy job at pan ‘n scan without additional plugins. Your system should look good. Keep at it. The quality you seek is in there.
Tom

[The202]

Michael,

Here is an example of a static image that I formatted for this project. https://www.diymac.com/002a.jpg. It is a 720 x 480 image with a .9 pixel aspect ratio. This next image is an uncompressed, fully rendered frame from my time line. https://www.diymac.com/002a.png. My project setting is derived from easy set-up..DV-NTSC. My source images are all TIFFs, I saved 002a as a .jpg for uploading this example only.

For my animated images the graphics are much larger allowing for pans, zooms etc. with out moving beyond the 100% pixel threshold.

I just started with motion but only for an short intro to this project.

[The202]

Also before every one weighs in to tell me that image is correct and it simply needs to be de-interlaced in PS just to verify, I know. In fact if you try it your self you get a fairly decent image although not as sharp as the original. Unfortunately as I mentioned before the video output is much worse. The image shakes well beyond standard video and DV25 jitters…it practically jumps. Rendered, RealTime RT, playing or parked at the playhead, the result is always the same.

I loaded Avid Free DV, running on the same hardware, same DV deck and Monitor, loaded the same image and it’s rock solid.