Problem with stills importing into FCS2

[Chris Borjis]

how big are they?

what sequence setting are you using?

[David Roth weiss]

Are you looking at them on a computer monitor or a video monitor?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Post-production Supervisor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

[Jasononamac]

They range from 200k – 1mb I had to scan them in, but they look excellent even from the browser in FCP. But as soon as I drop them into the timeline they get terribly muddled.

I am viewing them on the computer monitor and it’s in Dv/DVCPro ntsc, if that’s what you mean by what sequence setting.

[Jasononamac]

Computer, but the video I added to the timeline looks perfect.

[David Roth weiss]

[JasonOnaMac] “I am viewing them on the computer monitor”

Jason,

Viewing the canvas on the computer monitor is the problem. The only way to judge the true video quality is by outputing to a video display such as a monitor or TV. That’s the way RT viewing in the canvas works. If you’re working on a laptop without a video card, try dragging that sequence from the browser to the viewer, it should give you a better idea of the final quality.

David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Post-production Supervisor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

[Jasononamac]

[David Roth Weiss] “Viewing the canvas on the computer monitor is the problem.”

Here’s what doesn’t make sense to me. I just went and tried to edit the pics on my lousier laptop with FCP 5.1 and the pics lost no quality at all. So why does my new iMac with FCS2 look so dreadful?

And wouldn’t exporting to QT movie show better quality. It shows everything else fine with that. There has to be another thing I’m doing wrong.

[Walter Biscardi]

[JasonOnaMac] “Computer, but the video I added to the timeline looks perfect.”

As David noted, you cannot look at your media, any media, on a computer monitor when working with Final Cut Pro. FCP degrades the quality of the Canvas and Viewer for optimized external playback to a video monitor.

You say your images are 200K to 1MB, but you didn’t say what size they are. If you’re working in an SD timeline your images should be a minimum 800×600 to allow you a little wiggle room to make some movements with them. At the very least, they need to be 720×486 in frame size.

Generally when I’m using images for a photo montage, I get them all at at around 1500 wide to give me a lot of latitude for movement.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

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[Jasononamac]

Thanks, I will see what I can do with that info. Thank you all for your time.