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Quality Loss Expected?
Hi,
I’m experiencing a loss in quality when exporting clips from AE and bringing them into FCP. Is this normal? I did some searching on the COW and found this thread where it sounds like this quality loss is unavoidable and the best you can do is try to minimize it as much as possible…
https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?univpostid=874476&forumid=2&postid=874476&pview=tThe footage I’m working with is 720×480 DV, NTSC. I’m exporting a QuickTime movie from FCP, bringing it into AE, doing the fx work and exporting the clip using the animation, lossless settings. Resolution is set to full. Everything should be working, but when I bring the clip back into FCP, the image has been degraded. It’s passable, but the exported clip isn’t as clean and sharp as the original. The lights twinkling in the eyes are coming in soft and dirty.
Am I missing something? Should my workflow be different?
Thanks,
Brent -
6 Replies
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check field interpretation and position.
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This is more of a question I guess, but why use the Quicktime-animation?
Is this better then using the quicktime “no comression” setting, or the DV PAL (NTSC) compression?
I usually go for the DV compressor, or the “none” setting, when outputing to QT, and I
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Thanks for the replies.
I messed around with the Render Settings and had to set the “field render” to lower field first. That seemed to take care of the quality loss, but messed up my motion track. I’ll have to go in and mess with it. When tracking interlaced footage, is it better to turn the “Seperate Fields” function to off in the “Interpret Footage” dialogue box , or to leave it at “Lower Fields First?”
Thanks again,
Brent -
So, I’m trying to work out this tracking issue.
What I’m trying to do is replace a sign in the shot with a sign created in photoshop. I’ve got a pretty good track to match the camera movement, but since replacing the sign is an afterthought, the scene was not shot with any solid tracking points.
When I export the footage with “Field Render” set to “Off” and import it back into FCP, the photoshopped sign tracks really well, but the footage looks degraded.
When I set the “Field Render” to “Lower Field First”, the footage is much cleaner, but the sign suddenly has a lot of movement that wasn’t there before.Is this a problem of mixing interlaced footage with a non-interlaced element? And if so, how do I work around this?
Thanks,
Brent -
You really do need to keep your render lower fields first setting. If your footage is going back to video then it will need appropriate field settings to match the rest of the video source – rendering without fields won’t help you (unless the video edit is in a progressive frame format e.g. 24p).
What you need is a version of your photoshop file that has enough data for its movement to look smooth when field rendering is turned on.
You could try rendering out just your tracked Photoshop layer as a footage – just the layer with alpha channel (all other layers turned off), setting your comp’s frame rate to double your comp’s normal frame rate, and rendering with no fields. Then re-import this as footage, and double its speed, and try rendering again with field render enabled …..
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QT animation compression is a lossless comression format. It’s the main format I use in a production environment – unless we are asked to use proprietary codecs.
So, if you;re worried about quality Loss, ChristopherBook, you will be fine with QT animation compression set to a quality of 100.
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Aharon Rabinowitz
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http://www.allbetsareoff.com
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