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Rendering in Final Cut Pro HD gives me lower quality images
Hello, I am using Final Cut Pro HD 4.5 and am having trouble with resizing video in Final Cut. Once I resize my quicktime files to 50% or 25%, and then render my sequence, the video quality becomes worse. I made sure that it wasn’t the fault of the quicktime files by recapturing directly into final cut from tape.
I notice the quality difference by comparing back to back a piece of the same video that is rendered and one that is not rendered. If I scroll through the one not yet rendered at 50% size, it looks pristine. If I scroll through the one that I just rendered at 50% it is pixelated. Do I need to change render settigns to improve the quality, and if so, how to go about it?
Right now, under Sequence –> Settings… –> and under the “General” tab, I have this selected:
720×480 NTSC DV (3:2)
NTSC – CCIR 601/DV
Lower (Even)
Compressor: DV/DVCPRO – NTSC
Quality: 100%and under the advanced tab this is selected:
Frames per second 29.97
Compressor Quality — Best
Scan mode — interlaced
aspect ration 4:3Thank you! Any help I can get is appreciated.
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7 Replies
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1. You must only judge quality on an external video monitor and not the computer monitor.
2. Any time you make an image size-change in any video system, it will affect the original quality.
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Suika,
One of the major improvements in FCP 5 was the scaling quality over FCP 4.5 but that said you still need to use an external monitor to properly judge the image quality.
What are you RT extreme settings set to?
RT extreme setting will affect the image quality seen in the FCP canvas.
Tony Salgado
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Still trying to figure this out. By the way I am using standard video in the HD editing environment – could that screw me up?
Thanks for the tip on the monitor. I’m going to do a test right now. I thought I could compare like footage on the computer – rendered and unrendered. But I’d also like to be able to see quality changes on the computer screen itself. Could you tell me where to change the RT extreme setting? Thanks.
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[Suika Suki] “But I’d also like to be able to see quality changes on the computer screen itself.”
Not if you are working with interlaced footage – there is no way to get correct looking interlaced footage on a progressive computer display.
Not to mention they have very, very different rendering intent of color spaces.Gary Adcock
Studio37
HD and Film Consultation
Chicago, IL USA -
Still having the same problem.
Okay, so I checked my footage on a monitor as you all suggested and I still have the very same problem I began with. I even dumped my test to tape. The footage on the monitor looks similarly pixelated as the video on the screen.
My question is this: Do I need to change my render settings or some other video settings so that when I render footage that has been manupulated — for example, resizing or keyframing — it won’t create a huge quality difference? When I simply resize to 50%, the quality of my footage becomes noticeably worse — At 100% I can crisply see the glint in the eyes of the person, and at 50% I can hardly distinguish the features of the face. Please tell me if this has to do with any settings in Final Cut that I am not aware of. In my first post, I give a detailed description of the settings under sequence that I am using. For example, under Sequence –> settins –> I am using the quicktime compressor DV/DVCPRO – NTSC. Possibly this is not the correct drop-down location to change settings?
Thank you for any help on this matter.
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In case anyone else is having similar problems, it seems as though my problem was with the render settings. I changed the compression from a DV/DVCPRO -NTSC to None and now once I export or dump to tape, it looks great. Before, using the former compressor, it reduced the quality to such a state that a face taking up 15% of the screen was unrecognizable.
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You can’t dump to tape using the None Compressor. Unless you know something that I don’t….
Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Seminar!
fcpworld.com
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