PNG files from photoshop looking lousy at normal size???

[Michael Gissing]

Firstly you are working in a sequence that is anamorphic so the png is being squeezed and then unsqueezed. DVCProHD is a good camera codec and many use it as an edit codec but it is compressed and not as clean as ProRes.

You might find it works better to copy the edit into a ProRes 422 sequence with true 16:9 aspect (1280 x 720).

I presume also that all quality judgments are made after rendering.

[Thomas Borden]

thanks for that advice, michael. i’m back home from my office now but i’ll try copying the edit into a ProRes 422 (1280×720) sequence first thing tomorrow AM. the footage was shot on the Panasonic at 960×720 60p. will FCP ask me to change the sequence settings to 960×720 (to match the footage) when i paste the edit into it? and if so, i assume i should click “no”?

[Michael Gissing]

If you click no it won’t resize (which is what you want), but it will mean that the footage may need to have the distort characteristics changed if it doesn’t automatically resize. So if shots look distorted you may need to adjust motion tab settings including distort.

[Chris Tompkins]

Also, I find having still images really large don’t look as good having them @ 20-30% in timeline. Try taking stills back to PS and making them half as a big and then bring back in to the FCP.
Also, fully render b/4 judge.

Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta

[Thomas Borden]

chris, i’m not sure what you mean when you say “still images really large don’t look as good having them @ 20-30% in timeline”. right now, my images are pretty large so when they are in the timeline, their scale is about 20-30%.

[Thomas Borden]

hi michael, i tried copying the edit into a ProRes 422 sequence, with 1280×1080 HD setting, and “best” motion rendering. but the images actually look a little worse now. lots of flicker around the edges and lines. the strange thing is that when an image is scaled/zoomed in on in the timeline, the quality looks much better. it’s only when the image gets closer to “normal” size that it falls apart.

[Chris Tompkins]

If your images are around 20-30% in size then you are NOT using 80% of the images – it is wasted energy so to speak.

I understand want it to have them a little large to move on them but what I’m saying is try – and your mileage may very – shrinking the images down some and re-importing or re-linking them.

If it’s 4000 pixels wide – drop em down to 1800 pixels wide and then relink and adjust in timeline and render.
Make sense?

Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta

[Thomas Borden]

thanks, will do.
on more question, in the sequence settings, which box should be checked for rendering:
– Always render in RGB
– Render in 8-bit YUV
– Render 10-bit material in high-precision YUV
– Render all YUV material in high precision YUV

[David Roth weiss]

[Chris Tompkins] “If your images are around 20-30% in size then you are NOT using 80% of the images – it is wasted energy so to speak.
“

Even more going on than just wasted energy, as the FCP render engine is not able to accurately deal with images that exceed 2K pixel dimensions.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

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[Thomas Borden]

that’s good to know. so if i’m working in an HD sequence with sequence settings of 960x720HD, does that mean that i should not import any PS file with pixel dimensions exceeding 1920?