shakey shadows/images & weird renders with 5.x

[David Bogie]

Drop shadows? I’m not having any issues with drop shadows at all once things are rendered. The realtime preview is unreliable so I don’t use it. Since they clog up everything while editing, I tend to set drop shadows up properly and then turn ’em off till the last output run is made.

I think most of us simply figure out how to cope with the limitations of the application and adjust our workflows. However, you may indeed be doing something incorrectly.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[Arnie Schlissel]

[tom adams] “and I’m not a big fan of this “dynamic playback” option since it really doesn’t playback things smoothly anyway”

Well, that’s the whole point of dynamic RT, it’s not supposed to play back smoothly, it’s just supposed to play back.

Dynamic RT is, basically there to let you establish your timing & placement, & then you render to check quality & fine tune your effects & treatment. It saves you the umpteen renderings that you’d have needed to get your timing down when you were using FCP2, but it still needs to be rendered before you can say anything about the look of the show.

Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com

[Kurt Reitz]

I too second the motion for a bug with the drop shadows. Here’s what I see on revisions of work that was perfect in 4.5 and opened in 5. When I have an aftereffects piece or a livetype render with a premultiplied alpha(the cat eyes effect comes to mind) and then I add a drop shadow it appears that the fields have reversed on that piece when rendered. I have chased that for 2 solid days before I gave up and went to plan B and generated my shadows elsewhere. I can repeat this on command to this day. Now I see it in work that was completely generated in 5.
My second pet peeve bug is the fact that a Livetype motion render is premultiplied over black and FCP recognizes it as a straight key. A single exported frame of the same piece is recognized properly with a black premultiplied alpha.
Now having gotten that off of my chest I happily work around it all and get the same results even though the software is WRONG!

Kurt Reitz
EGT Communications
Editing

[Tom Adams]

i know…i’m actually not having any issues with drop shadows …AFTER they’re rendered… but in 4.5 they looked just fine BEFORE they were rendered…as well as all the other things I mentioned in original post. i think when they created the “dynamic” thing they messed with the way we can view a lot of other things…including large stills and images that have any motion assigned to them. I’m having to try to correct a lot more “jittery” images than i did in 4.5.

don’t get me wrong, I’m still a huge fan…especially of the multi-cam options…I just feel like things have taken a bit of step backwards in some areas…

Regards,

Tom Adams – Director/Owner
Reelife Documentary Productions
“cool digital video stuff…not boring or dumb”
info@reelifeproductions.com http://www.reelifeproductions.com
Williamsburg, MA, USA

1.4Ghz DP mirrordoor G4
OS10.4.3, FCP 5.0.3
Panasonic DVX100a & EZ1

[Tom Adams]

aqctually, i take that back…the shadows still shake like crazy AFTER i render them… never used to happen in 4.5…

so, i did a little more investigating… here’s a question

when you go to sequence>settings>video processing tab>

there’s the option for “always render in RGB”, “render in 8-bit YUV”. …

i was set for “render in 8-bit YUV” buty my question is …

would i get better results with “always render in RGB”

anyone know?…thanks

Regards,

Tom Adams – Director/Owner
Reelife Documentary Productions
“cool digital video stuff…not boring or dumb”
info@reelifeproductions.com http://www.reelifeproductions.com
Williamsburg, MA, USA

1.4Ghz DP mirrordoor G4
OS10.4.3, FCP 5.0.3
Panasonic DVX100a & EZ1

[Kevin Monahan]

Are you viewing the images on a NTSC video monitor?
Safe RT?
Full Frame Playback?
High Quality?
Sequence>Render Selection>FULL Bar checked?
Video Processing Pref>Best Quality?

Make sure this piece is fully rendered at Full Quality, with all the RT PopUP menu settings in the correct position and view this on a good quality pro video monitor and tell us if you are still having trouble.

Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Seminar!
fcpworld.com

[Kurt Reitz]

22 years as an editor, AJA IO, 10bit to component to PVM-20M4U good enough for you monitor wise?
Now that we have the little questions out of the way….
Let me suggest to you that adding a motion alpha graphic generated externally from FCP to a timeline and then adding shadow to it from the motion tab will cause a field reversal in the render. Try it with any pre-rendered motion graphic with alpha that has a short move (about 2 sec). The alpha has to have internal movement and the video frame has to stay stable to make this apparent. I just saw it again five minutes ago.

Kurt Reitz
EGT Communications
Editing

[Arnie Schlissel]

[Kurt Reitz] “Let me suggest to you that adding a motion alpha graphic generated externally from FCP to a timeline and then adding shadow to it from the motion tab will cause a field reversal in the render.”

Well, it’s certainly not supposed to do that! Have you reported it as a bug to Apple?

As a workaround, can you apply the shadow in Motion or AE, prior to bringing it into FCP (which is how I prefer to do them, anyway)?

Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com

[Tom Adams]

Kevin,

Ok, I did some more testing and playing around…and the answer to all of your questions is YES…still really crappy shakey images.

here’s the scenario: one large still (300dpi scanned) image has been cropped & edges feathered over another image. I applied a shadow and rendered with all of your suggested settings and still completely unacceptable jittery shadow. I think this is a bug… it’s driving me crazy, can’t figure out.

would it help to change the sequence settings>video processing tab to “always render in RGB”. I would do this as part of the test, but when I tried, it changed the status of my render and I’d have to re-render this very effects-heavy 40 minute program…it said it would take over 5 hours to render.

Regards,

Tom Adams – Director/Owner
Reelife Documentary Productions
“cool digital video stuff…not boring or dumb”
info@reelifeproductions.com http://www.reelifeproductions.com
Williamsburg, MA, USA

1.4Ghz DP mirrordoor G4
OS10.4.3, FCP 5.0.3
Panasonic DVX100a & EZ1

[Tom Adams]

ok, boys and girls,..looks like the problem is solved…

…apparently, since I just recently installed Tiger, my apple software updater (set to weekly) hadn’t checked to see if there were any updates available…

BUT

the automatic system software update just popped up (dated 10/31/05) and it had a bunch of pro app fixes (including fcp5)…I downloaded, restarted and my problem with jittery shadows was gone…presto.

I highly suggest that anyone else who has been having these problems with “the shakes”…make sure they have the latest Tiger version installed (10.4.3). Hopefully, it’ll be that simple for anyone else.

go figure.

Regards,

Tom Adams – Director/Owner
Reelife Documentary Productions
“cool digital video stuff…not boring or dumb”
info@reelifeproductions.com http://www.reelifeproductions.com
Williamsburg, MA, USA

1.4Ghz DP mirrordoor G4
OS10.4.3, FCP 5.0.3
Panasonic DVX100a & EZ1