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Import Image Quality Issue
I’ve looked in the forum for related issues but nothing has helped so far!
I’m working on a short film made up mainly of stills, it’s been a while since I used FCP but on the last edit I did I’m sure we just imported the images using file-import. This time around, however, the image is a much lower quality than the original. Specifically there is noticeable interlacing and jaggy edges when i zoom in. The image is saved at 300 dpi and has been rendered on the sequence. I’ve haven’t adjusted the sequence settings aspect ratio is 720 x 576, aspect ratio CCIR 601/ DV PAL (5:4) and field dominance is lower.
I’m not terribly techy so any advice on settings i can change would help enormously – in Avid I came up against this problem but used the pan and zoom tool, is there a similar one in FCP? Also I can’t see the import settings?
The final project will be predominantly for web but may also be projected on a small size cinema screen so I want the highest quality I can manage!
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7 Replies
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Vicky,
You need to change your image settings from 300 dpi to 72 dpi, also make sure the image demensions are around 1500-1600 pixels wide.
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Did it but didn’t work, it’s still jaggy…
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Don’t use a DV sequence. It will make your images look bad. You need at least a ProRes sequence or uncompressed if your drives are fast enough.
Also the only way to judge your images is on an external interlace monitor.
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Thanks – could you tell me exactly how to chage my sequence to a ProRes sequence? I don’t have an external monitor just now but i can tell from looking on this screen that it’s worse than it was in photoshop…
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Also I read somewhere if you want to zoom in withut pxellation you should make images 300 dpi??
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There’s a lot on this forum and others on the topic of stills in Final Cut. Search the tutorials on the Cow and also over on Kenstone.net.
If your output is primarily Web, I’d make the sequence progressive and deinterlace the few video clips in it. Final Cut has a poor deinterlace filter but there are better ones available from third-party sources (some for free). Just open your sequence settings, and change the compressor to ProRes 422 HQ or Uncompressed 8 or 10 bit (if your drives and CPU can handle it). Set the Field Dominance to None. This should solve interlace issue on the stills. Again, if you have video clips, they should now be deinterlaced using a filter. My suggestion here is to match the sequence to the majority of your source material and to the final output.
Try to get away from the term DPI for video. That term is aimed at print. If you do the appropriate math, you see that the intent of using 300 DPI is simply to increase the pixel dimensions of the image. Video is pixels. Always, always look at the pixel dimensions of your stills. To pan and zoom they should be around twice the dimension of your sequence.
Truth be told, I have never had tremendous luck with JPEGs in FCP. I change to TIFF as early in the process as possible. Something about JPEG compression seems to make jaggy edges worse as they are scaled and moved in Final Cut. The progressive sequence should eliminate many of the problems caused by hi-res images in an interlaced project.
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Thank you – that’s great advice. I found a tutorial which helped clear up a lot of the issues. Am much clearer on dpi, file size and file format. Have set the sequence to ProRes and it’s looking better so i think that’s me sorted, thanks very much for the help!!
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