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Rendering makes footage look worse!!
I freelance for a lady who produces wedding videos. At the end of each video there is a split screen finale where all the clips are scaled down to 40% and played side by side. Everytime I output my DVD she makes the same comment “severe stepladdering during finale”
I’m capturing from mini DV via firewire, my settings are DV NTSC. My sequences are the same. I export as a Quicktime movie and then burn in DVDSP or encode in compressor and then burn, but I don’t see any improvement in the quality. I’ve read all the post and tried changing the motion filter tab, positioning on even integers etc. Yesterday I changed the aspect ratio I think (it’s the first option under the sequence settings tab) from 4:3 to 3:2 or vice versa. The hold sequence turned red, which I expected b/c my clip and sequence settings no longer matched. but when I would scrub through the sequence the scaled video looked absolutely gorgeous! So I thought yes, I finally found something that works! But then I rendered. And my beautiful footage turned into pure unadulterated crap. So my round about question is, how can I keep the crisp looking video after rendering???? And why is rendering making the situation worse? Any suggestions would be helpful.
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6 Replies
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try changing the render setting to ProRes.
were you ever able to do this before without a problem?
Final Cut Pro has one of the worst resizing tools ever.
It can’t scale down or up in a bicubic high quality fashion
like other NLE’s do.one thing guaranteed to work is to do that resizing in
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Do not change the aspect ratio or any of the other normal DV-NTSC settings if you want to stay in the DV codec.
Go into the Sequence settings for your sequence (not the overall Sequence Settings, which affect new sequences). In the Video Processing tab, change the setting for Motion Filtering Quality to “Best”. You will need to re-render. This should improve the quality of any resizing or other effects in the Motion tab.
If they still are unsatisfactory for you, you will need to use a different codec.
Create a sequence using the preset for 8 bit Uncompressed or Pro Res. Copy and paste the contents of your current sequence into the new one. You will need to render the entire sequence. This will eliminate the degradation caused by the DV codec. Export a Quicktime and encode. This produce better quality results. It will not produce better results if going back to DV tape however, as everything will be re-encoded to the DV codec and return to looking like mush.
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Thanks for your responses, the thing I changed was the frame rate settings not the aspect ratio. Anyway I changed that back to 720 x 480 and then changed the sequence to uncompressed 8 bit and then rendered (which took a lot less time) and it looked great! Final output will be on DVD, so can I just export the sequence as a QT movie and burn to keep the quality?
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[Rena Pace] “At the end of each video there is a split screen finale where all the clips are scaled down to 40% and played side by side. Everytime I output my DVD she makes the same comment “severe stepladdering during finale” “
If you are doing this multi-clip split view technique for every gig, create a template in Motion.
The rendering is far superior, even in DV. You can set it up with drop zones, replaceable text elements, and a replaceable background that might include content form the wedding templates like those billowing silk drapes.[Rena Pace] “but when I would scrub through the sequence the scaled video looked absolutely gorgeous! So I thought yes, I finally found something that works! But then I rendered. And my beautiful footage turned into pure unadulterated crap. So my round about question is, how can I keep the crisp looking video after rendering???? And why is rendering making the situation worse?”
“Crap” on a video monitor or just looks bad on your computer display? Huge difference. But any scaling operation in DV is going to cause some bad artifacts, nature of the beast and MPEG2 for DVD output will add its own garbage unless the person handling the encode is very skilled at controlling the procedure.
bogiesan
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Rena,
Rendering at 8 bit shouldn’t change the look of your footage at all. It’s just that you are not “monitoring” your video properly.If you have your Canvas scaled to anything but 100%, your footage will be scaled on the fly and it will concern the uninitiated as you believe that your footage has degraded. But it hasn’t! You aren’t monitoring correctly.
If you had a proper broadcast video monitor attached to your deck (or capture card if you have one), like most pros do, you would always see the proper image quality.
If you have not yet added a broadcast monitor to your system, it is incomplete. You really need one to always properly monitor picture quality, color and more.
The Canvas set to 100% precisely is a workaround that will simulate picture quality, but color and certain motion artifacts (deinterlacing needed) would be absent without monitoring to a broadcast monitor.
The confusion you are experiencing is understandable, yet it is very common for most editors that are new to the fray.
Kevin Monahan
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro -
Kevin I don’t know why or how, but changing the sequence did help.
I even hooked it up to my tv to make sure and not to toot my own horn but it’s gorgeous!
My question now is exporting, do I export as QT movie using current sequence settings to keep the party going? Or should I be handling this uncompressed sequence differently?
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