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Problems with stills in FCP6
Hi All,
After 1 month of messing around trying to figure out why my photographs (which have always come out clean with no jaggies or blurs) suddenly look so terrible and unacceptable that I can’t do photo tributes (even simple stills), I have come to the conclusion that the most recent upgrade to FCP 6 is messed up. Does anyone else have this problem?
I’m using digital photos that are all from one camera (a very good camera) instead of old pictures that I’ve scanned and when I try to animate the photos, they come out distorted looking like they’re shimmery like water and when still they look blurry and jaggy (aliased). They’re huge at 10 inches wide by 6 inches tall.
Before you respond, know that I’ve done the following so far with no luck in fixing them….
In Photoshop CS
– I tried to reduce the resolution from 350 to 72 and the width to 850 pixels across
– Added Gaussian blurs of .1 .3 .4 .5 and .6
– Added a regular blur filter in fcp
– resized the images to be less than 1000 pixels across in photoshop
– resized the dpi from 350 to 72
– imported them as jpegs, tiffs, pngs and picts
– recropped them and saved them as bicubit smoother tiffs and pngs and picts
– added a 1 pixel motion blur
– I’ve even gone so far as to make hard copy prints of the photos and scan them in the old fashioned way that always worked for me in the past.No matter what I do, the fabtastic stills in photoshop look absolutely terrible in FCP6 (Still, wavy & watery lines and blurry when still.)
Some folks on the Cow offered suggestions which resulted in my doing the following…
– full is checked in the render drop down
– I rendered the entire timeline out in full RTEven the Awesome Gary Adcock at our recent Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group suggested resizing the images to 720×420 – did that and I still had the same problem.
So then I went to Larry Jordan’s site and his latest newsletter references a really great presentation that John Bertram did (check it out at
https://web.mac.com/jb.net/PS-FCP/PixelTests.html) that I thought explained what the problem was. In essence, after looking at this presentation, I felt that the best image John Bertram had was the one done in Photoshop as a single layer psd file imported at 720X540 pixels so I…– created new 720×540 pixel psd files, copied the original pix and brought them into the 720×540 and manually resized them, also reduced them to single layer – but it didn’t work.
– I’ve even opened a new sequence and reimported everything into it.
– I’ve redone the sequence without any mattes or overlays so it’s just the still photos and still no luck.So, then I thought (jeeze, I have tons of these that came out great before, let me reopen one of them up) and discovered that they were from an earlier version of FCP so my guess is that something is drastically wrong with the way the latest update of FCP6 deals with photo stills – is there any way to go back an update or two?
I appreciate your suggestions that I learn Motion (and I’m trying guys but I suck at it so far) and do the sequence in there but honestly, I’m literally out of my mind from trying to fix this problem and deal with a personal issue (my mother is in the hospital so sorry if I’m totally freaking out here guys)
Is anyone else having these problems or is no one on the Cow using stills in FCP6 anymore? Any help will be really appreciated.
Best to you all!
Toni Carey
http://www.tonickproductions.comToni Carey
formerly Toni @ TONICK
http://www.tonickproductions.com
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo IMAC
w/500GB Internal HD
running MAC OS X 10.4.11
(always updated to current version)
1 LaCie 500 GB & 1 LaCie 1TB HD’s firewired to it
Running FCP Studio 2
Use Canon GL2 to shoot and digitize footage -
22 Replies
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I was just working with stills yesterday in FCP 6.0.3 and everything looks great. These stills were decently sized tiffs (3000×2000 or something)
1) Are you watching this on a proper monitor?
2) Get out of DV
3) Turn your field rendering off (or ‘None’)
Jeremy
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Hi Jeremy,
First, thanks for the reply!
Maybe I’ve made my photoshop pix too small (I redid them to 720×540 from their humongous original size of 3008 pixels wide by 2000 pixels high (but that original size didn’t work to begin with which is why I’m in this spot).
Okay, I’m still in FCP version 6.0.2. when I check for updates I just keep getting the QuickTime update 7.4.5 (There’s no update to FCP 6.0.3 showing, which you said you had) I didn’t update QT yet because I heard there were bugs with it interacting with FCP. Do I need to update QT first in order to have the update for FCP 6.0.3 show?
No, I don’t have a monitor yet but when stills looks this bad in the viewer I know I’m in trouble. I have rendered a quicktime out and run it on the tv and it looks completely terrible, which it never did before. It’s great advice to buy a monitor but I’m not going to be able to purchase one in the next few weeks which is when this project needs to be done.
Finally, what do you mean “get out of DV”. Are you saying I should open a new timeline and do different settings? This is part of a larger project that was shot on DV. If you’re telling me there are better formats out there to shoot on, I know this but can’t afford to make that jump yet.
Where would I turn the field rendering off? I’ve checked in system settings and user preferences but am obviously missing it.
Thanks Jeremy.
Toni Carey
formerly Toni @ TONICK
http://www.tonickproductions.com
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo IMAC
w/500GB Internal HD
running MAC OS X 10.4.11
(always updated to current version)
1 LaCie 500 GB & 1 LaCie 1TB HD’s firewired to it
Running FCP Studio 2
Use Canon GL2 to shoot and digitize footage -
Stills worked fine in 6.0.2 as well. It’s not the version of FCP that’s going wrong and yes, you have to upgrade to qt 7.4.5 before getting 6.0.3. I am going to stick with the list formatting today, I don’t know why:
1) Treat yourself to a monitor as the canvas as a low-res preview of your beautiful footage.
2) DV timelines trash a lot of information that might have been there. It’s best to edit in a higher quality codec. I’d even say dv50 if you can.
3) If you have other dv footage, leave the field rendering alone, but make sure to check that your stills have an even and whole numbered y value center point. For instance, if you still has a center point of 235, -230.34, change the y value (x,y) to 235,-230. Make sure every keyframe has an even y value. If it happens to be 235, -231, change -231 to -232 or -230 so it’s an even number. The x value doesn’t matter.
Make sense?
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Toni… you have had your head spun around a lot with a ton of misnformation (not from Jeremy, but some of the other sources you cite).
I strongly recommend you check out he Photoshop for Video podcast (start with some of teh earliest episodes) and “re-educate” yourself with the book Photoshop for Video. You are wasting your time with a lot of nonsense tweaks.
-Rich
Richard M. Harrington, PMP
Author: Photoshop for Video, Understanding Adobe Photoshop, and ATS:iWork
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What is the viewing scale of your canvas window? At 100% my stills look fine in the canvas. Have you made a DVD and looked at your stills on at TV? As Jeremy said you can’t judge your images by the canvas.
Dajen Productions
Santa Barbara, CA
G5 Quad – AJA Kona LHe
Huge 1.2 Raid
FCP 6.0.2-OS X 10.4.11-QT 7.3 -
Toni,
You are not alone. I’ve also noticed a more problems working with stills in FCP. Starting with v5 and getting worse with 6. I’ve never received a good answer to my questions, but I have heard rumors that Apple is pushing Motion for doing any motion graphics work.
Some things that I have discovered on my own and with the help of other Cow members:
Working in a higher quality sequence helps sometimes (sometimes it makes it worse!).
Shrinking the still in photoshop helps sometimes. Changing it’s file type helps sometimes.
Keyframing or altering certain motion tab parameters can cause problems (especially Distort, rotation and drop shadow).
I think what’s happening is that there are such a plethora or input formats as well as output formats that FCP isn’t good at dealing with all of them all the time. Certain filetypes (and even certain types of content) cause problems. Heavily compressed jpegs are not a good source for motion grahics work.
Like I said, Apple says “use Motion”. But I’ve even found that that doesn’t always help. It makes me think the problem is in Quicktime.
Anyway, there definitely appears to be a gremlin somewhere.
Gordon Gurley
Director of Operations
Stanford Video -
Hi Dajen,
Thanks for the post! I’m viewing it at “fit to screen” and it’s terribly aliased. I can see I have to invest in a monitor but I’m stuck on this project.
And yes, unfortunately, I have made a dvd and checked it out on a tv and it’s too terrible to even think of using.
Thanks again,
Best,
ToniToni Carey
formerly Toni @ TONICK
http://www.tonickproductions.com
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo IMAC
w/500GB Internal HD
running MAC OS X 10.4.11
(always updated to current version)
1 LaCie 500 GB & 1 LaCie 1TB HD’s firewired to it
Running FCP Studio 2
Use Canon GL2 to shoot and digitize footage -
Hi Jeremy,
Thanks again for the post!
On point 2) above…
2) DV timelines trash a lot of information that might have been there. It’s best to edit in a higher quality codec. I’d even say dv50 if you can.Does this mean I should start a new project at dv50 and bring everything in there and redo it?
On point 3) above…
3) If you have other dv footage, leave the field rendering alone, but make sure to check that your stills have an even and whole numbered y value center point. For instance, if you still has a center point of 235, -230.34, change the y value (x,y) to 235,-230. Make sure every keyframe has an even y value. If it happens to be 235, -231, change -231 to -232 or -230 so it’s an even number. The x value doesn’t matter.Sorry to be so dumb but how would I change the field rendering if I even wanted to?
Again, thanks for trying to help!
Best,
ToniToni Carey
formerly Toni @ TONICK
http://www.tonickproductions.com
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo IMAC
w/500GB Internal HD
running MAC OS X 10.4.11
(always updated to current version)
1 LaCie 500 GB & 1 LaCie 1TB HD’s firewired to it
Running FCP Studio 2
Use Canon GL2 to shoot and digitize footage -
Hi Gordon,
Thank you so much for your post! I was beginning to think only I was having these problems. What’s driving me crazy (besides the problem itself and that in the older versions this sort of thing would take me less than a couple of days) is that it seems no matter where I check online, no one has been able to solve this problem. It makes me wonder what everyone who encountered it did to fix it. Goodness knows no one would give a client something of such terrible quality.
I’m working on redoing the segment (yeah literally for the 15th time from scratch — good thing the client’s pictures are at least fun) using Motion and just doing them as stills with no movement. If that works, then I’ll try some movement.
Thanks again Gordon (and Jeremy & Danjen!) You guys are the best!
ToniToni Carey
formerly Toni @ TONICK
http://www.tonickproductions.com
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo IMAC
w/500GB Internal HD
running MAC OS X 10.4.11
(always updated to current version)
1 LaCie 500 GB & 1 LaCie 1TB HD’s firewired to it
Running FCP Studio 2
Use Canon GL2 to shoot and digitize footage -
Wow Richard, you are AWESOME to post to me. I just started watching your podcasts (in the hospital waiting room — hmm nothing like learning under stress). I am downloading the rest of them now and will definitely go through them.
Thanks for mentioning the misinformation angle — its difficult to separate the help from the unhelp when you don’t know what you’re talking about. I swear, if I survive this project, I will get your book and read it as well.
Many thanks again for posting Richard. I super appreciate it!
Best,
ToniToni Carey
formerly Toni @ TONICK
http://www.tonickproductions.com
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo IMAC
w/500GB Internal HD
running MAC OS X 10.4.11
(always updated to current version)
1 LaCie 500 GB & 1 LaCie 1TB HD’s firewired to it
Running FCP Studio 2
Use Canon GL2 to shoot and digitize footage
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