PDFs won’t rez properly in FCP

[John Pale]

Are they rendered?
Are you judging quality on the computer monitor and not your external video monitor?

What are the dimensions of your pictures? The pictures should be at least the size of your frame (720 x 486 for NTSC).

Also–not a good idea to import directly off a CD. Copy them to your media drive and then import from there.

[Stu Aull]

Hi John-
No, not rendered, but FCP output is attached to a broadcast 20″ video monitor. Even the “parked-on-the-timeline” output is pretty grim on the NTSC monitor.
Files are 200dpi 1500×2300 pixels – I’ve tried various sizes – all BIGGER than 720×486 – smae crummy results.
Have no choice but to take directly off CD into photoshop – all the individual pages are part of one PDF document. If you – or anyone, knows how to get at these pages separately, PLEASE tell me!! I guess I could load the PDF document onto my drives. Not sure how that would improve quality though??
Again, I have NEVER had a problem with stills before, but this is the FIRST time I have pulled pages out of a PDF Document. Its pages out of a PDF instruction manual, so a lot of print with some 2-tone images and line art. Simple stuff…

Thanks for taking the time to write John~!
Anyone else?

[Michael Gissing]

What is the res of the original stills? No point in making the res so high either as FCP just has to scale it back to 72dpi and 720 x 480, unless of course you are zooming in and doing moves etc.

I wonder if the original stills are low res and that is why is looks crud.

[John Pale]

[stu aull] ” If you – or anyone, knows how to get at these pages separately, PLEASE tell me!! I guess I could load the PDF document onto my drives. Not sure how that would improve quality though??”

When you open a multipage PDF in Photoshop or Illustrator it gives a dialog opens letting you choose which page you want to work with. In Photoshop you customize the resolution and size in this dialog. Make sure you are using sensible numbers….Make sure you are in RGB and not CMYK. Then do a “Save As” to your media drive. Do this for each page you wish to use. Import the new separate pages from your Media Drive.

For the record, I just tried doing this using the FCP User Manual PDF file and it works well, with no artifacting.

[stu aull] “No, not rendered, but FCP output is attached to a broadcast 20” video monitor. Even the “parked-on-the-timeline” output is pretty grim on the NTSC monitor.
Files are 200dpi 1500×2300 pixels – I’ve tried various sizes – all BIGGER than 720×486 – smae crummy results.”

Try rendering. You may be seeing draft quality.

[Stu Aull]

Hello John- thanks for the response:
-I am using the Photoshop import Dialogue, importing a page at a time onto my drive once converted
-I am selecting 200 dpi, RGB, sized natively at about 950x 560 (tall pages). I even tried at double-ish rez: 1500x___
-I am looking at these as a “parked” image on the Canvas, not rendered. I have always had such “stills” look like final output quality before without rendering…
I will render out to see if there is improvement-
Thanks to all.
Sounds like I am doing what everyone else is here. Thought there might be something “special” that needed to be done with a PFD Document, but apparently not 😉
Stu Aull
Alaska

[Peter Dewit]

Make sure full is checked in your render settings.

[Stu Aull]

Hi Pete:
My settings in FCP are
Under the
>System Settings >Playback Control >Video Quality: DYNAMIC
NOT High

I thought this was a “real time” (ie NON rendered) feature for playback while editing, as opposed to Final Output (rendered).
In other words this selection did not affect my final, rendered program I am outputting to tape.
Am I wrong?
Thanks!
Stu