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Ideal Settings for my purpose?
Hi Guys,
I thought I had this project all ready to go, but I’m having some strange issues. Here’s what I’m trying to accomplish:
I want to create a ‘Kiosk’ type reel that will loop and play back on a 42″ 1080p capable TV. The video will be output from a laptop (or maybe a desktop) and could be either a Mac or a PC – but either one will have enough horsepower to playback fullscreen HD. For some reason, when I output from my Macbook Pro (17″ unibody) via DVI into the TV (it has a DVI input) it only gives me 1080i instead of 1080p. Which is fine, as long as I can make my project match.
I’m using a combination of LiveType, Motion and FCP. Here is how I had imagined I would use them.
1. Create a FCP project (What settings should I use? – e.g. Codec, Field Dominance, Pixel Aspect, etc…)
2. Create a LiveType Project create my title sequences. (Does this need to match the settings in FCP?)
3. Create a motion project (Does this need to match the two above?) – for 3D camera fx – and import my LiveType project (As Project)
4. When finished in Motion, I’ll render it out and bring back into FCP for final edit of multiple segments.Now, here’s the catch.. I’ve already done this, but I did it at 720p because I didn’t think I’d need the higher res. But then when I previewed what I had done in motion (after rendering it out) I noticed that the LiveType titles were aliased and that it was playing a bit choppy. I assume those two issues aren’t related, but I’m not sure. The test preview I had rendered was played back via QuickTime onto the 1080p TV over DVI out of my MBP.
Also, I read over this entire thread to try and fix the LiveType aliasing issue: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/73/855535
But it doesn’t seem there’s a consensus on what’s causing it. I didn’t feel like dealing with the grumpy guy – because, after all, if you don’t feel like answering a question – don’t. But you don’t have to be snarky about it.
Anyway, if there are any non-grumpy pro’s out there that wouldn’t mind making a recommendation for my situation, I’d greatly appreciate it.
Thanks!
J. Gohil
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3 Replies
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I’d use DVCProHD 1080p. or 720p. 720p should look just fine. But true it’s horizontal rez is pretty limited. Kind of like an extreme anamorphic. It’s squeezing 16:9 into a TRUE 4:3 sq pixels image. Even SD anamorphic doesn’t go that far. But, it still looks great. And the overhead is pretty low on the processor and can even play back over firewire 400.
Motion – just render out 1080p DVCProHD (or 720p) files and drop them in FCP. Forget about the roundtrip crap. It will take you 10x as long to render motion projects within FCP. Render in Motion. If you want to make a change, render over the same file.
LiveType – I think only renders as animation codec. So that’s going to play back choppy til you drop it in FCP and render. Don’t bother roundtripping if that’s even an option.
Create your masterpied in FCP and save as a quicktime movie (self contained). Open in QTPro and use present movie or fullscreen play back out to your monitor via DVI if that’s working for you. Otherwise a looping DVD or Blue-Ray would be another option.
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Hey Bret,
First, let me say thanks for your informative and non-snarky reply!
I took your advice and switched everything over to the DVCProHD 720p setting and I’m well satisfied with the quality.
Unfortunately, the LiveType issue had nothing to do with my settings per se. I did a number of tests to isolate the problem and this is the conclusion I came to. Oh and one thing you mentioned tipped me off to this..
Since LiveType uses the Animation codec, even though it allows you to export the project into motion, it doesn’t render it. Even when rendered on the Motion timeline, it doesn’t really render the LiveType project. I tried rendering my LiveType timeline and then importing the rendered version into Motion and Voila, no aliasing issues.
That said, the entire reason I was using LiveType was because of it’s versatility in terms of text placement. I didn’t want to render because I assumed it would keep the text vector so if I ended up doing some zooming (dollying) in Motion, it would stay crisp. So no crispness when it’s not rendered (the original problem) and semi-crispness when rendered (but not scalable without loss).
So I’ve ditched the idea to use LiveType altogether. Instead, I’m going to do my text placement stuff in Illustrator and then import that directly into Motion. That should allow me to do what I want.
There are still a couple of things I’m in the dark about regarding Progressive vs. Interlaced. For example, I was under the assumption that any signal being played back from a computer (either via VGA, DVI or HDMI) were all progressive by default. So why is that this TV reports it’s running off my MBP in 1080i? I suppose it could just be a shortcoming of the TV. Otherwise, on my Samsung 40″ at the office, I can output full 1920×1080 as a secondary desktop.
The other thing that’s a bit vexing is that I’m using a Generator (Radial Gradient) as the backdrop in Motion, and it looks great while I’m working in Motion, but when I export, the Gradient seems to lose ‘fidelity’ – for lack of a better word. It seems ‘stepped’. Is this because of the TV or is it due to my export?
Oh, something else interesting I found was that even if I’m working in 720p, I can export (up-res I guess) to 1080p and it looks just a wee bit better. My jpg images in the composition seem less compressed than when using 720p. Could just be my imagination…
Thanks again for your detailed and concise recommendations, they were really appreciated. Any ideas on the gradient issue?
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Gradients are an 8 bit problem. Adding noise oddly enough can sometimes alleviate it.
I would doubt that LiveType would retain it’s vector art in Motion. Illustrator was a good idea.
Uprezzing 720p to 1080 might look better because one is a calculated, rendered uprez, while otherwise it’s being done on the fly by tour TV.
How old is that LCD? Perhaps it doesn’t do 1080p, so when you send it a dvi signal, output at 1080, it can not recognize it as 1080p since it doesn’t know what 1080p is.
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