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Problems with “Ken Burns Effect” in FCP 7
Hi all,
I’m editing a wedding video, and I want to use some some still photos (jpegs shot with a Canon 5D) alongside some video (ProRes 422 LT). Dropping the photos into the timeline and using the motion effects to get a “Ken Burns Effect” was easy enough for me to do, but when I closed my project and reopened it, I noticed some very strange irregularities when I played these photo montages back. I would get a bunch of green and magenta artifacts every few seconds or so, and the overall motion on the photos would seem to skip. The audio accompanying the photo montage would also skip and have strange popping sounds. This was apparent in playback in the canvas (but not the viewer). When I exported a sample clip into Quicktime (H.264), it got even worse: sometimes a completely green screen would flash, and the sound would turn into a tone (it’s supposed to be people talking).
When I go back into Viewer > Motion, my motion keyframes look normal. However, I noticed that when I clicked the “x” button on the distort effect, timeline playback no longer had these problems. The clips in the timeline were, however, in need of rendering (green line on top of the timeline). When I render, the problem comes back. If I export, it obviously renders, and the problem exports with it. I have no idea what I’m doing wrong; I have quite a bit of experience editing, and I’ve used the motion effect on photos before with no problems.
My timeline is set to ProRes 422 (LT), 23.98 FPS, 1920 X 1080. The jpegs I’m using have two different dimensions, 2784 X 1856 and 3861 X 2574. I’m using the motion effect to zoom and pan into them. I read in an old thread here that I should change my motion filtering quality to “best” in the sequence settings, but this didn’t help. This problem occurs both when I have ProRes video in the timeline with the photos and when I just have photos in the timeline. I should also add that I’ve tried editing this project on two different computers as well (MacBook Pro and Mac Pro), so it’s not the machine’s fault.
Does anyone here have any idea what I might be doing wrong? Do I need to convert the jpegs into ProRes before I export to H.264?
Thank you!
—Nick -
11 Replies
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Two things; try changing your JPEGs to TIFF files, they seem to be more agreeable to FCP. Also, I think FCP has a 4000 pixel limit on the pictures, add your height and width to get the total for your picture sizes. You may have to reduce them down to get them to play nicely.
Bars & Tone
SALUTE! -
Thanks for the advice, but I don’t think it worked 🙁
I used Photoshop to convert the jpegs to tiffs, but I still get the artifacts on my frames. I tried it out with a variety of compression options (None, LZW, JPEG) and Pixel orders (RGBRGB and RRGGBB), but none of them gave me the results I needed. In the case of the tiffs with JPEG compression, I wasn’t even able to import them into final cut; it gave me an error that said “File Error: 1 File(s) recognized, 0 access denied, 1 unknown.”
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Sorry, I usually don’t apply any compression to my TIFFs for FCP, so it didn’t occur to me to mention it.
Did you try reducing the pixel count to less than 4000?
Bars & Tone
SALUTE! -
Well, I did some research on that 4000 pixel count thing, and I heard that it’s actually 4000 X 4000 (after all, HD Video is 2,073,600 pixels per frame, or 1920 X 1080. All of my images are less than 4000 X 4000, so I don’t think that’s the problem.
As for compression, the first time through I saved the tiffs without compression, and I still ended up having issues. The picture below is what an uncompressed tiff looks like when I converted from jpeg to tiff (I had to convert it back to jpeg in order to post it on this board, but it looks the same.) The distorted bar on the bottom third of the picture is just one example of the type of distortion/artifacting that i’m encountering.
I have also tried saving the tiffs with compression, and while they come out clean (no artifacts visible in the still frame as pictured above), they still have artifacts show up when i put them in a video timeline. I’m beginning to think this is a timeline problem, but I pretty much have to keep my sequence settings as they are, because I’m using some video as well.
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That’s a new one on me. I’ve not run across any problems that look like that. Hopefully, someone on the forum will have the answer.
Bars & Tone
SALUTE! -
Thanks for all your help, Joe!
I did a bunch of test sequences and messed around with the framerates and codecs, and I found that if I changed the framerate from 23.98 to just 24 flat, it got rid of the problems I was having. Of course, the Canon footage I want to use is 23.98, so I might not be able to mix them together, but we’ll see.
You’d think FCP could make “video” of any still image at any framerate without problem, but go figure.
I’ll let you know how it goes!
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Again, I’ve never seen this issue. I’ve dropped JPGs, TIFs, and PNGs into 23.98, 29.97, and 59.94 video without that kind of artifact. Usually, if FCP doesn’t like a particular picture file it either gives an error message or closes out completely. It seems there is something else going on in the background.
For future reference, PNGs with transparency, alpha channels, are not always compatible with FCP transitions and effects. You get edge lines moving with the effect. I always forget about this and it doesn’t show up until it’s rendered. The files usually need to be converted to a TIF with an alpha channel.
Let us know when you find the culprit behind this.
Bars & Tone
SALUTE! -
Hi Joe,
I am having issues with dropping any kind of still image into FCP and then applying the Ken Burns Effect. Before rendering, everything seems to be fine, but after I render or export, I am getting choppy edges in the images. I have tried JPG, TIFF, PNG, etc, and I am still having this problem.
Any thoughts?! I am pretty stumped at this point…
Lindsay -
Check your Sequence Settings.
Under the Video Processing tab make sure the Motion Filtering Quality is set to BEST.
Under the Render Control tab set Quality to BEST and check the “Always Use Best Quality When Rendering Movies”
I hope this helps.
Joe -
I made those changes to the settings, but still have the problem. Thanks, though. I have used this effect before and didn’t have this problem, so it makes me wonder what has changed.
Lindsay
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