Rough Edges in Text in FCP

[Steve Eisen]

You can fix the problem by viewing your output on an external monitor (not computer screen).

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Board of Directors
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[William Saviola]

I am sure on the fcp computers at my university this problem does not happen though. So your saying once exported it will be corrected because even with graphics i have imported form After Effects they all have jagged edges to just like creating font in FCP ?

thank you for replying so fast

[Jon Jivan]

Both FCP and AE should give you smooth letters. The jagged edges you see are likely the result of a rough render or scaling.

Look at your footage at 100% in the viewer window and see if the edges are still jagged. If they aren’t you’re fine.

If they are, perhaps your footage isn’t fully rendered. Go to Sequence: Render All: Video.

[Steve Eisen]

Thanks to Shane:
Playback Quality is blurry / interlaced / low quality / crappy
ONLY JUDGE THE QUALITY OF YOUR MATERIAL ON AN EXTERNAL BROADCAST MONITOR, OR AT LEAST A TV.

The Canvas in Final Cut Pro is a degraded representation of your finished work. Apple expects you to have a properly connected external broadcast monitor or TV to your editing system.

If you do not have a proper external monitor, you will not be able to properly view the finished quality of of your work.

For more about this topic and other basic FCP questions, check out Shane Ross’ Real World FAQ’s.

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/ross_shane/fcp_faq.php

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Board of Directors
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Michael Gissing]

Did anyone mention the codec? If it is DV then yes text looks ordinary.

[William Saviola]

Thank you for all efforts to try and resolve the problem , however it is still the same with the compressor on DV PAL.

I dont own a another monitor and i know that other fcp users in my house dont get jagged/rough edges.

I am only scaled in to 100% and it is still jagged sacled in in and out. all of my video has been properly rendered

I have FCP version 5

Would it have anything to do with the aspet ratio ???

[Tim Hiatt]

I’ve been using FCP for several years and have had the same problem often. I have never been able to solve it until just now. I was working on a project and the text was jagged and showed strong interlacing lines. After trying all kinds of things, I went into the Sequence, Settings, Field Dominance, then changed it to None. Suddenly the text looks great. I exported the movie and the texts are smooth and they don’t jerk around anymore either. I hope this works for you.

[Nance Flynn]

Awesome! Thank you very much! Changing the field dominance to NONE worked.

But why? Upper is the default setting for a lot of the HD sequence presets. Why would it be a default if it always looks bad?

I don’t really expect anyone to know the answer. I was just curious. 🙂

[Larry Herbst]

Six years later, thanks for the field dominance comment. The joy of using ancient Final Cut 7 software, I have to look for answers that are over half a decade old.

BTW, My issue was importing a graphic from After Effects. It looked fine in the Viewer but jaggy when dragged into the timeline and viewed in the Canvas window. For whatever reason, Field Dominance on that one clip (as described in the browser details window) was “Upper”, so if I changed the sequence settings to Upper that graphic suddenly looked great…but the rest of the video was off. Solution was to re-render that sequence to make sure its field dominance was “None”, and then every clip in the sequence will have the same field dominance and no more jaggies.

Took me a few hours to track this one down. Again, thanks for the help.