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Poor output from FCP
I’m working on my first real FCP project and still learning a lot about FCP and Macs generally.
The project is DV-PAL but mainly graphics based. It will go to DVD eventually but I’ve been doing some export tests and am having problems that I hope the cow can help with.
On the AJA-IO (RGB) output, all looks good when stopped but as soon as the TL plays there appears to be what looks like an interlace error on the bitmaps (worse at the bottom of the screen compared to the top for some reason). The bitmaps have not been scaled, but have been moved by the clip motion control. The DV – (PIP) looks fine. Dragging the playhead everything’s perfect, it’s playing and rendering that suffer.
When I try a test export (animation – mov, – not getting into all the vagueries of m2v yet!) the areas of the timeline that need rendering look perfect, but all RT material (bitmaps) have this fuzzy-interlace look.
Sequence settings – DV pal 48khz,
Audio/video settings:
Sequence preset = DV pal 48khz
Capture preset = DV pal 48khz
Device control preset = Firewire pal
Video playback = ProIO pal component RGB 8bit 422 (720×576)
Audio playback = built in audioRT settings are high quality, safe-RT, (& record to tape = full quality but I’m not going to tape anyway)
What am I doing wrong here? Do the bitmaps (jpgs) need to have a field order setting or is there something else I’m missing? Pixel AR set to square. On further experimentation when I set field dominance to even for the bitmaps the blurr direction is bottom to top of screen and this reverses when the field order is set to odd. Field dominance= none, still displays the problem. Using integer vales for the ‘motion’ position offset helps a little but no cure!
If I need to force the whole timeline to render for output (prog duration is about 90 mins) how would I go about doing that? and is this something that you FCP pros have to do very often? Will a ‘compressor’ mpeg2 conversion force a render or would I be better creating a self contained mov and converting that?
Many thanks for any adice and help here.
Alan (uk)
– DualG5(2.5) 2.5GB-ram, AJA-IO, FCPHD4.5, QT6.5.2 plenty of media storage.
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9 Replies
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The first question we ask:
“How does it look in your video monitor?”
Kevin Monahan
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
fcpworld.com -
I had similar problems, and the advice I was giving was to apply a deinterlace filter in compressor (set it to blur) and it solved the issue…
Graphics are very tricky when it comes time to putting them on DVD…
If your not using compressor, but making a QT first, then use either the MJPEG codec or Photo JPEG.. You will get a bigger file but the output will be much nicer to work with…
*** but mostly, don’t forget the deinterlace filter…
good luck!
markyyy
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Thanks to you both for such speedy replies.
The wierd thing Kevin is that the RGB monitor also reflects what I’m getting as output on the animation codec mov. It looks very clean if the TL’s been rendered, but ‘interlaced’ when playing unrendered, either safeRT or unlimited RT.
I really don’t understand how changing the field dominance of a still, in it’s properties, can give the results it does.
The bitmaps are really clean and I don’t like the idea of adding a blur at this stage. Maybe before it goes to m2v or some compressed codec, but having it look so bad in the animation QT codec makes me think there’s something wrong here.
Once again thnk you both for your interest.
Alan
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Are you sure you are checking the video monitor and not the computer monitor? You see, there’s no way to check out Animation Codec to the video monitor. When you say “RGB monitor”, that indicates a computer monitor, so you are confusing me.
What kind of sequence are you working on? DV? Is the graphic on a whole, even integer for X, Y value (check the Motion Tab). Is it rendered with the dark green “FULL” bars checked?
Kevin Monahan
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro
fcpworld.com -
No Kevin I’ve got a decent Sony pal monitor hooked up to the AKA IO via RGB and it’s displaying exactly what I’m getting by rendering to the animation codec.
All looks very clean on both when the timeline’s pre rendered but both look bad when the TL in unrendered AND playing. When tl stopped thee monitor looks perfect.
Thanks
A
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It looks very clean if the TL’s been rendered, but ‘interlaced’ when playing unrendered, either safeRT or unlimited RT.
Which “Playback Quality” have you selected in that same menu? You need to set it to Full to see the full quality preview.
As Kevin noted, are you really using a RGB (not YUV) monitor? This is fine if you’re dealing with computer generated graphics only, but you should arrange your setup to work in YUV if you’re working with camera footage or exporting to video.
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and another thing… I noted your are using the IO’s video output and the G5’s audio output. In this configuration, there will be a few frames lag on the video, but not on the audio.
So either you ignore audio/video sync on the video monitor, or you buy a mixer and use the IO’s XLR or TRS audio out.
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playbak quality is full.
I’m using an RGB monitor as that’s all I’ve got convenient for FCP at the moment.
Thanks Le
A
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Yes I know about the audio Le.
Todays the first day I’ve hooked up the i/o and I started the FCP project on another machine so I’m building, learning and working simultaneously.
I’d hoped that FCP would take over from my Pinnacle Liquid Silver and they’re working alongside aech other at the moment. I’ve still a lot to learn about how FCP does things.
Alan
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