small still photos in FCP composite look low-res

[Kevin Monahan]

Check them on a pro monitor not the Mac. You can approximate quality with canvas at 100%.

Kevin Monahan
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Pres. SF Cutters

[Alexander Gao]

And maybe you could check if you are on “Scrub High Quality”.

Thanks,
Alexander Gao

“When the revolution happens, I’ll be leading it.”

[13]

What resolution is the graphic, Wat type of time line are you puting it onto, (DV NTSC, 8Bit, DVC PRO HD etc)

these can have a big effect on how well a graphic looks

[Rileym]

THANKS a lot for your help, its much appreciated.

yeah, it looks the same on the external monitors. i’ve got 2, 1 consumer, 1 professional NTSC monitors, and they still look low res. basically, it just looks pixelated to about half of the resolution that it should be. so weird.
i’m outputting to .wmv on this project, via flip4mac, and it looks the same in those files (as well as quicktime files)

i’m on a dv timeline, 8 bit, and the ‘scrub high quality’ doesn’t seem to change anything.
maybe i should try a 10 bit timeline?

thanks again

riley

[Dan Riley]

What is the pixel size of your photos?

And btw, it won’t make any difference if you do this sort of thing in an
8 bit or 10 bit timeline. The problem is somewhere else.

Dan

[Rileym]

thanks again for your help.

pixel size? i don’t know exactly what you mean.
there is plenty of resolution in the photo.

in photoshop, i transformed scale of these photos down to the relatively small film strip graphic (maybe 70-80 pixels high of the 480 horizontal in DV) – but th photos look good in photoshop…

riley

[Rileym]

messing around with it a bit more now to give us more info…

the graphic looks fine on the same timeline UNTIL i put the livetype background underneath it.

the .psd file by itself looks fine, and the 6 seperated layers from the .psd file look fine when i take the .psd background away. its only when i place these layers (or the whole .psd file) on TOP of the livetype background that i lose resolution in the photos (but the livetype backgound looks fine)

i’m mystified.

but thanks for helping me work through this.

[Rafael Amador]

Have you set “rendering in high precision YUV” and “Motion filtering quality” to BEST?
Are you animating the LiveType file inside FC?
Rafael

[Rileym]

yes, i do have those two settings in the sequence presets set to ‘best’ and high presicion YUV.

and no, i’m not editing the livetype file within fcp.
spitting out the .mov out of livetype, and importing into fcp.

hm.

[Rileym]

i’m really mystified by this whole situation, and need to find a solution for my client soon on this. so any help you can offer is much appreciated.

again, the photos look fine on the exact same timeline that i’m working on UNTIL i drop the texture/background that i created in livetype on video layer 1, then the photos appear to lose about half of their resolution. i do have 19 layers of video in this composite, but they all seem to work just fine until i put in that livetype texture, and then you can really see that the photos look pixelated.

i don’t believe that i’m doing anything unusual so i’ve got to believe that this is a problem that some of you have faced before… any ideas?

thanks again for your help everyone!

riley