Still Images that don’t flicker and pulse

[Dan Browne]

I had the same problem a little while ago when I was using Adobe’s Premiere Pro. In Premiere I just de interlaced the clip and it all went away. Dont know if this will work with Final Cut, but its a possibility.
D

[Bret Williams]

Use the smallest rez image neccessary. FCP does a horrible job at scaling images down. I generally shoot for 1000 pixels wide for images I scan for zooms and stuff. Unless I know I’m going to crop into the image substantially. 1000 pixels lets you zoom in 30 percent or so. FCP actually does a pretty nice job of enlarging things beyond 100 percent as well.

Motion or AE is a great tool for this stuff, but a heck of a lot more trouble.

[Tom Brooks]

Mike,
I’m into a big edit with a ton of various and sundry stills of every type and am having similar troubles. I’m trying to discover what it is about certain stills that causes the problem. I’m also seeing some extreme jaggy edges that won’t go away. It’s not always related to very large sizes. I’m scaling everyting down to “reasonable” sizes in Photoshop before bringing in. One of the flickery shots was only 456 x 768 or thereabouts.

I’ve found a couple things that help. Long story short – flattening and blur. One trick is to use a little blur – say .2 or .3 of Gaussian blur (maybe more on a really large still). The other has to do with edges and alpha channels. I seem to get the best quality still with an alpha by making it a PSD file, saving the transparent part as a selection (alpha), using a black background layer and then flattening the file. This gives a flattened PSD with alpha channel. Some of the files I’m getting have a Path that outlines the object. The Path can be made into a selection, which can be used to drop out the background. Sometimes this results in a very hard edge that causes shimmery edge effects on moves. The best remedy for that is to feather that selection by 1 pixel and sometimes to contract it by a pixel.

I’m in the thick of this, so I’m still figuring it out. I’m interested in anything you discover.

Final Cut Studio 2, FCP 6.0.2, Mac OS-X 10.4.11, Quicktime 7.3.1, After Effects 6.5 Pro, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V5.1, 4.5GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT 256MB, G-RAID 2x1TB FW800, 6TB RAID-5 (Enhance E8-ML, Highpoint 2322), Panasonic HVX-200P P2.

[Jason Porthouse]

Having just been through this with another project (200+ rostrum photos) I’ve found the best way for me –

Use flattened images where possible. Don’t use PSD files unless you want the layers to remain separate. Full quallity JPGs (saved with quality at 100) are fine, TGA files bigger but slightly better.

If you’ve got twitter or moire patterning, use a blur – usually set to 1, and as most twitter is in the horizontal plane, you can use a directional blur.

Don’t go too big. Use the smalles size you can, accounting for any moves you may wish to do.

I used Motion for the rostrum animations, and was very pleased with the results. I used the keyframe editor and was able to work quickly after the first few – simple moves, rotates and zooms are a breeze. More complex stuff is achievable with a little head scratching, but overall I was very happy with the results…

HTH

Jason

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Mike K. kroesen]

Jason, I appreciate the detailed advice. I will follow that. If I learn anything as I go I will also post it as well.

Cheers,

Mike Kroesen
Freelance Editor, Seattle
206.325.6789
http://www.kroesenfilms.com

[Mike K. kroesen]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the advice I will follow it. If you lean anything else please let me know. I wont be starting to get into this in detail until next week. As I do if I learn anything else that can help I will post it as well.

Cheers,

Mike Kroesen
Freelance Editor, Seattle
206.325.6789
http://www.kroesenfilms.com

[Mike K. kroesen]

Thanks Dave. I’m going to use Motion and see how that goes.

Mike Kroesen
Freelance Editor, Seattle
206.325.6789
http://www.kroesenfilms.com

[Chris Tomberlin]

Mike,

If you have to do this in FCP, use the ant-alias plug in under the “stylize” (no idea why it is in there) group. This is a built in FCP plug and helps overcome FCP’s lousy scaling of hi-res images. As a much better solution for this and all things related to compositing and motion graphics, I’d HIGHLY recommend getting After Effects and the Automatic Duck plug-in that will allow you to send sequences from FCP to AE and maintain all the moves and stuff you’ve built in FCP. AE gives you so much more control in your moves and will render at much better quality.

Chris Tomberlin
Editor/Compositor/Owner
OutPost Pictures

[Mike K. kroesen]

Thanks Chris,

I had not heard of using the anti-alias filter for this purpose before. I will give it a try.

Cheers,

Mike Kroesen
Freelance Editor, Seattle
206.325.6789
http://www.kroesenfilms.com

[Jason Kurtis]

I’d like to thank everyone who offered their advice on this thread. I was having a similar problem and your suggestions helped to resolve it. Keep up the good work.