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Is it my bleary eyes, or is that picture fuzzy?
I don’t get it. I’ve owned, engineered and maintained everything from Matrox Digisuite to Avid Symphony…Linear Online to Media 100..and I thought I knew how these things work. But the way FCP with Kona3 handles resolution in the timeline simply baffles me.
When I capture SD Uncompressed 8 bit and use the same sequence settings, I add a dissolve (transition) to a clip and the resolution drops at the transition point to something like DV25. But if I add a blank text effect over the top of the whole thing, then the resolution stays clear. Are there two (or more?) paths to effects processing?
When I work in HDV and try to export a clip to work on it in After Effects, it sometimes changes color space or field order before it gets back to FCP. And when I export pristine (Apple None codec) GFX originating from AE, they get soft when they are put on the FCP timeline.
I’ve surfed through the preferences and system settings and even the 8 inch thick set of manuals, but I am having trouble finding anything that relates directly to this Kona3 system and the problems I am seeing.
Does anyone know of a clear and concise documentation or a primer for this system that will keep me out of the weeds?
For that matter, a clear explanation of the relationships between pixel dimensions, aspect ratios and color space as files are moved from one app to another. Wrangling resolutions and compression schemes sometimes takes all the joy out of the creative process. It sends me into techie-geek mode, then all my creative juices start to dry up.
Any input from you gurus out there is very much appreciated.
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4 Replies
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On your RT Extreme pulldown (on the left part of the timeline, next to the timecode), are you set to Safe RT, and Playback Quality to: Full? I’m betting it’s set to Dynamic, which would explain that. It might require you to render each time, due to the Safe RT setting, but it will be full quality at playback. If that’s not it, we’ll look into something else.
Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks
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Are you watching fully rendered clips or realtime effects? FCP drops the resolution in order to maintain more realtime funcationality when you’re set to unlimited RT. This allows you to work faster, but you must render everything out before you output and to see full quality.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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You also must use an external video monitor to see your true rendered quality. You can see a reasonable facsimile in the Canvas when it’s set to 100% precisely.
Kevin Monahan
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro -
Sorry for the delay in getting back. The system was tied up in a long render, then client review…
The system is set to Safe RT, scrub high quality and high playback quality and frame rate. Although when I switch these, I dont see any noticible difference. I did also notice that when exporting from the timeline, I can set the QT Options to Uncompressed 8 bit, but I cannot set it to high quality. The summary info says “medium quality”. Is that not adjustable in FCP?
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