Photo Montage Jaggies

[John Pale]

If it looks fine in FCP (on a video monitor–not just the computer screen) its happening during your export from FCP or your MPEG2 encode in Compressor/DVDSP.

Please state how you exported from FCP (settings, etc.) and how you encoded for DVD.

Sounds like your field order is getting reversed somewhere in the process.

[Stamatios Dimitrakopoulos]

Hey John,

I actually don’t have a video monitor to preview things before burning to DVD so my initial judgement is based on what’s on the computer screen.

In FCP I used the DV NTSC 48 kHz sequence presets. Once I put together the sequence I exported to Compressor and used the DVD Best Quality 90 Minutes settings (MPEG-2 6.2 Mbps 2-pass for video and Dolby Digital Professional 2.0 at 192 kbps for audio).

Then I just built the DVD in DVDSP by importing the assets, putting them on a track and connecting all the necessary menus/buttons.

So as you can see I don’t really stray from standard presets.

[Trent Whittington]

Hello,

I used to have a problem like this when I was using Sony Vegas 8.
Two ways I used to fix it were making self contained movie files for the still images. Also if you are using jpeg files I would recommend you convert them to tiff files in photoshop.

They worked with me in Sony Vegas; however I have yet to have this same problem in final cut pro.

good luck 🙂

Trent Whittington – Currently doing Associate Degree in Digital Television

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Stamatios,
Change your sequence codec to DV50, 8b Unc or ProRess. Export a Self-contained movie and send it to Compressor.
Avoid render in DV. Too much compression for graphics.
Cheers,
Rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Kai Cheong]

Can I assume the jagged edges were especially visible on photos that have been rotated, even by a few degrees?

You might want to try using Perspective > Basic 3D [of if you have, the free ‘Andy’s Better 3D’ plug-in], instead of using the motion tab to rotate your photos. Gives cleaner lines along the edges. Something to do with better algorithm calculations [sorry, I’m not a programmer].

AND you get to play with the X, Y & Z axis, which adds extra, erm, dimensions to your montage.

Kai
FCP Editor / Producer with Intuitive Films
—
Now ‘LIVE’! Check Out The Intuitive Films Blog @ https://intuitive-films.blogspot.com
At Intuitive Films, We Create: TV Commercials, Documentaries, Corporate Videos and Feature Films
Visit us @ https://www.intuitivefilms.com
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MacBook Pro 2.4GHz | 4GB RAM | FCP 5.1.4 | Mac OS X 10.5.2

[James Disch]

Do what Rafael says. That’s the solution that I use and it’s worked great for me numerous times.

http://www.rapidlightproductions.com

[Rich Rubasch]

Hmmmm…not sure anyone has nailed this one yet! My suggestion is that you are using digital photos that have a resolution so large that FCP has to scale them down to 20% scale or less. If that is the case, I suggest pre-scaling all your photos down in Photoshop (use a batch action to do it on many) and perhaps add a pixel or two of blur to them as well. I have a feeling that the noisiness that you are seeing is not due to codec or monitor, but rather feeding FCP images that have resolution way too high for editing in a timeline.

Just had a client who had this issue in Vegas, and scaling the images down a bit and adding just a bit of blur made them silky smooth in the final DVD.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Kevin Monahan]

If you don’t have a video monitor, a TV set will work when connected to your DV Camcorder or DV Deck. It’s what many editors just starting out do.

Kevin Monahan
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro

[Larry Asbell]

Rick nailed it exactly.

For years I’ve done moves on stills in both Avid and FCP. It’s a very common problem that images have too much hard edged detail to make clean moves in video. Whether from digital cameras, scans or computer graphics, edges that are too hard, especially horizontal lines, will jitter as they jump from pixel to pixel across the video raster. Don’t worry that you are throwing away sharpness. We are talking about detail that is beyond what will make it to the video anyhow.

I have found no formula for how much blur works but if the still dimensions are a fraction larger than the video you may find that less than one pixel is enough. If it’s three times the video dimension than a couple of pixels may be enough.

The detail in the still has to be softened before it hits the move effect. You cannot reduce the flicker at all if you try to apply a blur or any other fix after the move is done.

– Larry Asbell

[Stamatios Dimitrakopoulos]

I went ahead and tried Rich’s method first and it fixed the problem for me.

Thanks to everyone that responded. Your suggestions taught me different ways to approach this problem and in turn has made me a better editor.

Good luck in all you do !

~Stamatios