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Still photo moves are poor in v7
I’m having a severe problem with my edit system or effects program or both. In the past on my Media 100 system with AfterEffects 5.0, I have used still photos very successfully in videos. I’ve imported the stills into AfterEffects, done moves, perspective warps, and other treatments with them, rendered them to QuickTime movies, and imported them into the Media 100 as scenes. They have always looked great— smooth edges, etc.
The same cannot be said with my new edit system. The stills look fine in AfterEffects 7.0, and moving on them does not effect the smooth edges on objects and lines in the shot. But the whole thing falls apart when the AfterEffects files are rendered to QuickTime movies and then imported into the Avid. The stills look hideous, with huge stairsteps on all sharp edges and lines. I have tried every possible combination of field dominance, I have tried numerous composition settings in AfterEffects, and even rendered the AfterEffects files out as jpeg and tiff sequences and imported them into the Avid that way. Nothing makes any difference whatsoever. The stills are terrible when imported into the Avid.
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1 Reply
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So I thought you might like to know the solution to the stairstepping problem I was having so you can avoid the problem in the future. The problem was operator error.. The Avid can have multiple input presets. You can create a new one, set all the parameters, and give it a name. That way if you want to change input settings you can just select the preset instead of having to change all the parameters each time.
After all other tests had failed to fix the problem, on a whim I took a look in the Avid’s preferences and noticed that the input preset “WMV” was selected. Since I wasn’t importing WMVs I got suspicious and opened the preset only to discover that for whatever reason it had been set up to import things upper field first. This wreaks havoc with images in terms of stairstepping.
How the WMV import preset had gotten selected is a mystery to me, but the solution was to switch to the import preset with the settings dialed in for what the Avid wants, in this case lower field first. End of problem. I have to re-import all the QuickTime movies I made in AfterEffects and re-lay them in the Avid timeline, but at least everything looks fine.
And now I know to check to make sure I’m using the correct import preset before starting to digitize or import effects files. Live and learn.
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