-
Image Pixelating in Full Screen Mode
Hello,
I’m new to CreativeCOW, but I have exhausted all my resources trying to figure out this issue, so any help would be really really appreciated!
I am helping put together a pitch presentation for my current job and they decided to run the presentation from an FCP Project. It had to be an SD sequence, since the majority of stuff as an standard def (DV PAL 720X576). However, there are some stills that had to be included as well. The stills are huge (3144X1500 pixels, 300DPI), yet here is what happens: they display great at 100%, but look incredibly pixelated when in full screen mode. It is an SD sequence, so I guess that makes sense, because full screen is blowing up the images, is that right? Same thing happens to the titles. (They are rendered completely, the RT is unlimited and playback quality is dynamic – also tried full).
I’m wondering if there is way around that? I tried exporting the stills (both out of an SD and an HD sequence) as a same as source QT and reimporting them, making freeze frame, exporting screen grabs… but no luck.
Another option, which is a question #2, I guess, is – if they have a “client” monitor as opposed to going full screen during the presentation, would the problem persist? And if not, (question #3) can a projector be set up as an external monitor and recognized by FCP?
I’m running FCP 7.0 on MAC OS X 10.6.4 / 2X2.66GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon / 12GB
thank you so much.
Aleks -
10 Replies
-
The stills are not being blown up but drastically reduced in size. Pixelation on stills and titles however is a common problem using a DV sequence.
Try copy pasting your final edit into a ProRes422 or 10 bit uncompressed timeline (SD 720 x 576) and then render. You may not see much in the original DV footage but all graphics, text & stills will be better. Also note that DV is the only lower field PAL codec. FCP will automatically apply the shift fields filter to the DV footage. If you have slo mos then bake those in by making a new quicktime of the slo mos before you copy into the uncompressed or ProRes timeline.
-
Thank you so much for the tip!
I did what you suggested and it’s a major improvement. I also tried setting the field dominance to “none” as opposed to “lower” in my regular DV PAL timeline and that seemed to help a bit as well. But the uncompressed ProRes sequence is the way to go!
-
Your ProRes sequence should be interlaced and upper.
-
Hello,
I am also having problems with my still images loosing quality and I don’t have the latest FCP. I have version 5.1.4. What is the best format to use to get best quality stills in the movie? That would be great if someone could help me with that.
-
What are your project/timeline settings?
-
Hello,
My sequence settings are: fr.size 720×576, 25fps, DV-Pal, Pix aspect PAL-CCIR-601, field dominance lower.
I have a photo-jpeg on one track and a film on top of it on a 2nd track. The film has the same settings as the sequence and the photo-jpg is fr.size 919×576, 25fps, pixel aspect square, field none.
Thank you for your help! -
Also I forgot to mention that the quality loss happens when I export the movie to quicktime (with current settings) and strangely it also gets slightly squeezed…
-
Making a Pro-res sequence as per Michael’s suggestion definitely helped me. Maybe you can try and export the images out of the pro-res sequence and import them into DV PAL as a clip.. see if that does anything.
Another thing that helped me slightly was setting the field dominance to “none.” But no matter how you twist it, the images never looked as crisp as when I was working with them outside of the DV sequence.
-
OK. I’ll try that. Thank you!
-
[Lauren Marsolier] “OK. I’ll try that. Thank you!”
Right, but Prores is not an option if you have FC 5.X.
You can try DVCPro50, 8/10b Uncompress or even PhotoJPEG (75% quality is great).
You may also try setting “Render in High Precision” and “Render Motion Effects: BEST”.
rafael
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up