Stills resolution for HD project

[Chris Poisson]

My rule of thumb, is roughly twice the frame size of your project at 72 dpi. Rarely have I needed anything bigger, higher rez files are just a waste, and choke FCP. Not to mention add to artifacts like jittering.

Have a wonderful day.

[Williebondo]

Chris,

So you’re saying the size of the image is the problem. That I should cut them down and reduce the res to 72?

[Walter Biscardi]

[Greg Nosaty] ”
Can someone recommend a resolution that will work with small “Ken Burns” style moves?”

It’s not the resolution, it’s the frame size. 72dpi is all you need for resolution.

If you want to do moves on the images, then you generally want the image size at least double of your video frame. So for 720p, you’d want an image around 2400×1500. That gives you plenty of real estate in the 1280×720 frame to move your images around.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[Chris Poisson]

2x the frame size, Walter put it right. 72 dpi is all you need, FCP will sometimes choke on high rez images. Just a waste in video.

Have a wonderful day.

[Shane Ross]

I have a tutorial on this topic, Stills used in a 720p project.

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=8&page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/ross_shane/movement_on_stills/index.html

Shane

Littlefrog Post

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[Greg Nosaty]

[walter biscardi] “It’s not the resolution, it’s the frame size. 72dpi is all you need for resolution. “

Ok fair enough but when I set the scanning software to 72dpi I get a 522×421 image. If I scale it up to 400% the image is 2089×1686. But when I scan at 300dpi the image is 2176×1756 which is in the ball park that you are recommending.

So should I scan @ 72dpi and scale up the image or just scan @ 300dpi resolution?

I’ve always found this size vs resolution thing a bit confusing. Especially when you compare print, screen image and video. Thanks for enlightening me.

cheers,
Greg Nosaty

Cinemontage Productions Inc

[Greg Nosaty]

[Shane Ross] “I have a tutorial on this topic, Stills used in a 720p project. “

Thanks for that Shane. But I noticed when you opened your images in Photoshop they were at 300dpi and not 72dpi. Why?

I also have an unrelated question. What software do you use to record the screen image for your tutorials?

cheers,
Greg Nosaty

Cinemontage Productions Inc

[Walter Biscardi]

[Greg Nosaty] ”
I’ve always found this size vs resolution thing a bit confusing. Especially when you compare print, screen image and video. Thanks for enlightening me.”

Yeah it is confusing. dpi only refers to print as in dots per inch.

What you’re scanning is probably a small item so it’s coming up as a small frame size.

So scan at 300dpi, then take it into Photoshop, open up Image Size, and change the resolution down to 72 but don’t have Photoshop resample the image. This will leave it at the larger frame size with the smaller resolution.

Smaller resolution is better for FCP for better performance.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR The new Color Training DVD now available from the Creative Cow!

Read my Blog!

[Shane Ross]

Those stills were either downloaded from the Library of Congress, or provided by Corbis images. that is the DPI that they provide. I didn’t care about that, I just cared about the resolution….that it was about double my project resolution…which it was.

You can at 300…just know that it will make large picture files, and large files make the system slower, and mean more rendering. When we scanned pictures…two of them, we scanned at 150DPI and at double the size of my project. They worked better, and were faster, and required less rendering. I could have reduced the DPI in photoshop, but that didn’t occur to me at the time of the tutorial.

I used SNAPZ Pro for that, but lately I prefer IShowU. Cheaper, faster and better. Choose ALL THREE!

Shane

Littlefrog Post

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD now for sale!
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[Williebondo]

Thanks for the info. I figured it out. Just changed the field domaninace in seq settings to none and it cleared right up.