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Scaling large images…
I’m having problems manipulating large images within Motion. I imported a large JPEG into Motion (3264 x 2448) which was obviously way too big for my project, which is 720 x 480. I scaled the image down to a manageable size, but now when I change the view of the canvas to just 200% the picture starts to pixilate noticeably, and gets progressively worse as I scale up the view. Am I wrong in assuming this same thing will happen when the project is played back on a bigger monitor, such as a TV? Also, should I be scaling my images to a certain pixel size (possibly 720 x 480) before importing them into my project, or is simply scaling them inside my project good enough?
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6 Replies
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200% is not how the image will look in it’s rendered form- it’s the rendered form blown up by 2X. 100% is how it will look. You should always use images that you will not scale past 100% at 720×480. So for example if you have a still you want to scale up in Motion by 200% it should be imported at no smaller than 1440X960 or you will get some degradation.
Noah
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Setting the canvas magnification to more than 100% will always result in pixellation. It’s like lookiong at a printed page with a magnifying glass–you’ll start seeing more and more of the ink pattern the more you magnify it.
Changing the scale of the element in the project is preferred to scaling the file permanently–you have more control. The costs include slowing processing and probably running into the 2K size limit more frequently.
Jim Kanter,
Digital Film Institute
http://www.dfilminst.com -
Motion can’t handle any single element larger than 2048×2048 in most cases, without complicated workarounds…I’m not sure what you mean when “scaling up the view”: are you zooming in on the canvas, or scaling your picture? Do you need the picture to change scale in the project (i.e. appear to ‘zoom in’ or ‘zoom out’?), if you want to actually move and modify these pictures in motion, scale them to no larger than 2048×2048, and as a general rule, no smaller than double your frame width (in this case 1440). That will give you room to play around with them and the scaling quality will be good as long as you set anti-aliasing quality to ‘high’ and possibly turn on field rendering and motion blur if necessary…but do these steps only just before you render as they slow the system quite a bit
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Heya,
Great post! Just wanted to chime in with the reminder that the 2K limit (2048×2048) is an ATI issue. Nvidia cards allow for 4K (4096×4096) images.
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Ha — interesting. I heard something about this…are you sure it’s true for all nVidia cards? For instance the discontinued 6800GT? I wish I had some extra PCI slot space to spare for that massive thing…4k image sizes would help me a lot!
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Just upgraded from an ATI 128 MB card to the Nvidia 6800 GT and all the alerts about cropped images and the slight shifting I’d been experiencing on playback have disappeared. In addition, general playback is much better, as would be expected. No need to mess around with Fixed Resolution anymore. I’d highly recommend upgrading. BTW – I had problems finding this card in stock at a decent price. You might want to try B&H for one.
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