Rastery Graphics inside FCP project

[Bj Ahlen]

What Photoshop setting did you use?

Especially pixel dimensions (not “dpi” which has no meaning in video)

Did you start with a vector file such as .eps?

[Vincent Strader]

Yes, starting out with an .eps file

In photoshop I change it to pixels since I’ll be importing the final file into FCP.

The project I start in photoshop is 720×480

The file I save it as is a .psd that I am importing.

But I’ve saved it as a .JPG, a .tiff , a .bmp , a .png , and an egg.

just kidding

All files look great at first, even when we shrink it just a little. But we have to scale it down quite a bit.

I’ll youtube the original PSA and show you the purple martin logo we’re working with.

[Vincent Strader]

Here it is.

It’s the purple martin logo below the video

You’ll see the wings are a little jaggedy.

It looks worse on a larger monitor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGWd4Jd5-lI

[Michael Gissing]

I am unsure you are saying that the rastery edges are happening in AE or FCP.

If they are OK in AE and a problem in FCP, then my guess would be that you are using DV codec in FCP.

Have you tried Uncompressed or ProRes codecs?

[Vincent Strader]

Mr. Gissing
I’m referring to the purple martin that is stationary in the video.

It’s just a graphic. We’ve tried in several different formats and each time the edges get rastered like that around the wings.

I’m scaling it down inside of FCP.

What I will try next is having different sized logos made inside photoshop , then import them into FCP without having to scale anything.

I just hate to have to take those extra steps. I can’t tell what the dimensions of the logo should be before taking it into the video.

So I’ll have to make a few of them to make sure it fits in place.

[Bryan Banks]

It seems like you didn’t catch all of the above statement..

What codec is your sequence in FCP set to? Have you tried changing it to Uncompressed or ProRes?

-Bryan

[Erik Lindahl]

I haven’t seen your issue first hand since the YouTube clip is gone but a few things about FCP, Video and Graphics:

– FCP can handle scaling and esp. rotation of graphics really really poor
– Certain colors in graphics will look like garbage due to the 4:2:2, 4:2:0 och 4:1:1 color-sample of most codecs. This will primarily affect really colorful logos (coca-cola red is the classic “bad” color to work with).

How do you deal with the above?

– Avoid setting your graphics in FCP if possible
– If you can’t avoid this, use Photoshop to prep your work as much as possible.
– Avoid using highly saturated colors if possible
– If you can’t avoid this, color correct them a bit – remove saturation and make them slightly darker to compensate them looking washed out.
– Avoid using really really sharp graphics with fine details. This can introduce jitter, flicker or as you say here, rastery looking graphics. To avoid this, After Effects has a million tools for subtile blurs, outlines and such to clean things up a bit (again, FCP is poor at this).
– Move to a higher format / codec. DV och HDV at 4:1:1 / 4:2:0 color sampling will look far worse than ProRes or Uncompressed 4:2:2 material (4:4:4 is of course the best but 98% of the time you can’t deliver this). The higher bitrate can improve things also depending on what you’re doing.

My normal workflow is to always set titles and graphics in After Effects. This is time-consuming but the end-result is far far far better than using FCP. But as stated I can’t see what your exact issue is.

————————
Erik Lindahl
Freecloud Post Production Services
http://www.freecloud.se