ProRes antialiasing issue

[Ben G unguren]

When you have such strong, contrasty, saturated colors running into each other, you should expect the jaggies that you’re seeing with ANY 4:2:2 codec (or 4:1:1, or 4:2:0, etc). That’s because of the 2’s in ProRes422. While the luminance values are at full resolution, the color info (hue and saturation) is cut in half. Normally you wouldn’t notice this, except when a crisp line depends almost entirely on the color info to make sense — which is exactly what yours is doing.

The Animation codec is an RGB codec, and all RGB codecs are full resolution (you can’t cut the green channel in half and expect it to look right).

For editing you could use a 4:4:4 codec and you should get the same results you’re seeing with Animation.

Ben Unguren
Motion Graphics & Editing
http://www.mostlydocumentary.com

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[Art Lee]

Ah, I see, that’s what those 2’s are for.. Thanks very much that makes perfect sense.

[Walter Soyka]

Just to add to Ben’s post, you might consider using ProRes 4444 if your work is going to FCP editorial.

Animation at 100% is lossless and well-suited for large areas of flat color (like in the reference image). QuickTime with the PNG compressor is lossless as well, but it will usually yield smaller file sizes than Animation for more textured imagery.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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