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Importing Stills into 16:9 Sequence
I want to know the optimal way to import stills into a 16:9 Sequence. I shot the stills using a Nikon D70 using the raw/basic size (i.e. for every picture I took I get a raw file (.nef) and jpeg file (.jpeg)). I shot the footage using a Canon XL2, 30P, 16×9.
I have/will also add motion to the stills.
I was told that it is better to convert the raws to tiffs. Is this true? if not, what is the best way?
Also, do I need to then apply a de-interlace video filter onto each picture?
Any help would be much appreciated asap.
Thanks.
–Matt
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7 Replies
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Do you have experience using Photoshop to convert RAW files? They’ll need to be color adjusted before you can open them. If you’re not up to speed on that I’d suggest just using the JPEGs your camera produced. The resolution of the photos is likely going to be much larger than the video frame which means they’ll all be shrunk down to fit. The shrinking will probably eliminate any quality difference between the RAW and JPEG files anyway, so I’d go with the JPEGs as they’re easier to deal with.
You don’t need to de-interlace them as the photos aren’t interlaced to begin with.
Try importing one of the photos right into Final Cut and see if you can manipulate it the way you want. If it’s too big to work with you’ll have to shrink them with another program before you import them, but hopefully you can just drop them into your project and start working with them right away. Do a test with one and see if you run into any problems. If not, that’s the way to go!
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Jeff,
I really appreciate the response. Ok, well I have already put the about 40 jpegs into the sequence so that is good news. But there does seem to be some sort of interference (right word?). The edges seem to almost beam and ficker and seem a bit blurry although the jpegs are crystal clear. This occurs especially on white or shingles (They are pictures of New Orleans devastation).
Any thoughts?
–Matt
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The edges of the photos? I would try going into the Motion tab and finding the “Crop” field. Just crop each edge by 1% and see if that clears it up.
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excuse me…the edges within the photos
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Do NOT just put the digital stills in the Timeline. OPTIMIZE them in Photoshop first – always!
You REALLY need to resize those JPEGs to about 1440 x 960 at 72 DPI. Anything more is usually overkill and will give you some of the anomalies that you are reporting, such as moire and flickering. It also is overtaxing your processor and will kill alot of your RT performance. This frame size should be plenty big enough for doing your “pan-zoom” moves. If not, optimize your images at 2160 x 1440 at 72 DPI instead.
Many people choose to not optimize their digital stills and toss them right into FCP. I don’t agree with this and take every single still into Photoshop first. I also add 1 pixel of vertical blur, which seems to help as well.
A final gotcha is to make sure that you are rendering your graphics correctly and always monitor the results on a pro video monitor. The Canvas LIES.
Render ALL graphics at Full Quality prior to judging quality.
Sequence>Render menus all have the dark green “FULL” bar checked.
RT Pop Up Menu set to Safe RT and FULL Quality
All graphics are set on keyframes with an X Value that are WHOLE, EVEN numbers
If you don’t need to go out to DV tape and are going to DVD – master your sequence in a higher quality codec like DVCPro 50.Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Seminar!
fcpworld.com -
Thanks Kevin! One last question…How do you add 1 pixel of vertical blur?
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Kevin
I am curious re: your thoughts of loading the stills into After Effects first and then rendering out appropriately cropped, filtered,sized, color corrected QT. In time lapse sequences of hundreds of images a Photoshop-FCP workflow would be a real pain.
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