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Importing Pictures – dpi 150, 300, etc…
I want to edit something quick with final cut 5.1 and I have to edit some video along with pictures that were shot at full quality using a Canon digital camera (7 mega pixels) So anyways my question is – is there a dpi limitation / size restriction I need to limit my self to? I know it will be 720 x 486 but using image/wireframe cant I just scale the pic down. I do have CS2 so I could make adjustments to pictures if necessary – its just a little home project editing pics & video from a softball league game so its not for broadcast or anyhing big – simply an SD home project cutting together with music. Its also harder than I thought to edit pictures with video in a creative cool type of way – any suggestions on this?
Clearly I am new to editing and I apologize to you all if this question is uber beginner stuff. Any advice / suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you
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9 Replies
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DPI means nothing. A 720×486 image at 600 DPI looks exactly the same as one at 72dpi. DPI is for PRINT…not video. For video, PIXEL size is what matters. 1440×972 will be much sharper than 720×486.
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
All true, but it is still better to not tax FCP with wasted pixels. Using images sized around twice your frame size is all you should ever need.
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So does this mean that i should make all pictures 720×486 in photoshop before gringing into FCP or do i use image/wireframe?
thank you for your responses.
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Resize them in photoshop to 72dpi and to the neighborhood of 1400×900 pixel size (constrain the proportions) to allow room to zoom into the stills. If you only resize to 720×486 72dpi you will not be able to blow them up without watching the image degrade.
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[BklynHunger] “So does this mean that i should make all pictures 720×486 in photoshop before gringing into FCP”
No, it means you should make them either two or three times that size, depending on how tight you’d like to zoom into them.
FCP can actually handle the entire 7-megapixel image, but it will take you a whole lot longer to render with no appreciable quality gain, but with a significant performance hit.
“No job is worth doing more than once…”
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Post-production Supervisor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles -
The pics I take on my Canon when full sized at 7.1 mega pixels is 3072×2304 so depending on what I want to do withthem in final cut what do you recommend I size them to?
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If you’re finishing in SD (720×480 or 486) and don’t want to zoom in at all, just make them 720 pixels wide (or 900 pixels to have a little more flexibility).
If SD and you want to do little pans and zooms, then go about 1400 pixels wide.
If SD and you want to zoom into someone’s nose, just bring them in as they are.
-Russ
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There are two variables you seem to be confusing: dpi and image size.
72 dpi is all you need your image to be because the rest of the resolution is not needed for display (it IS needed for prints). What happens when you have an image with more resolution than 72dpi is that FCP will use lots of muscle to make it 72dpi.The other issue is the actual size of the image. If you resize your image only to 720X480 at 72dpi then you will not be able to zoom into or blow up the image because the image is the size of the screen and any zooming will cause the image to pixelate.
Balancing these two factors means you should get rid of the huge amount of extraneous info that exists in the higher resolution by changing the resolution to 72dpi. At the same time you should also change the pixel dimensions of the image to (as noted here several times by several people) 2-3 times 720X480 for SD projects.
To do this go into photoshop (save a copy of your image so you don’t ruin your original that you may want to print later on photo paper). Take your copy and using the image pull down menu adjust the resolution and size accordingly (as described above). Be sure to constrain the properties so your image does not become distorted.
Good luck.
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Thank you everyone for your advice.
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