Why do my images stutter?

[Bouncing Account needs new email address]

Try this:
Apply the Video Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur.

Adjust the setting to 0.25 and keep adding “more” (up to 0.75 or even 2.0) as you observe the results.

As images (moving or stills) are more “complex” they can “buzz”on the video screen.
Adding the Gaussian Blur Filter can create an image that looks smoother.

You need to RENDER the effect to view full quality on the external monitor.

In FCP 5 set your video processing to “Best Quality” (It defaults to “Normal”).

[Tony]

what codec are you using in the timeline.

This will also have a major impact on an motion artifacts from stills.

Uncompressed codecs are the best dv codecs one of the worst for this application.

Tony Salgado

[Striperfly]

Thanks for the responses. I’ll try the gaussian blur and see if that helps. As for the codec- I’m not quite sure- The footage was shot on dv 24p advanced, with the pulldown removed on capture.
Thanks again,
Tom

[Tony]

Tom,

From what you explained your footage is in the dv 4:1:1 codec which is less than ideal for motion on stills.

The blur will help out greatly but you may still have some artifacts.

I had a job similar to yours awhile back and I ran a comparison between dv, dvcpro 50 and 8 bit uncompressed to compare the degree of motion artifacts.

Both dv and dvcpro 50 had motion artifacts I found unacceptable so I ended up doing the entire piece in 8 bit uncompressed without problems. My footage had been captured originally as uncompressed.

Tony Salgado

[Bret Williams]

Stuttering and artifacts are quite different. Blur won’t really help artifacts, and it sure won’t help stuttering. Blur is more for the interlacing on slow moving stills or for the flickering you get with fine details and thin lines. If it’s flickering you’re getting, use the flicker filter which blurs, but only in the vertical direction, which will fix the problem without significantly defocusing your images.

If it’s stuttering, the you may be rendering the fields in reverse somehow. There was also a bug with early versions of 5 and DV, whereas if you chose to render motion at the highest quality, it created a stutterlike or non-field rendered kind of look.

[Striperfly]

Tony,
I don’t think there’s much I can do about the compression now, since it was shot in dv 4223 ( I think)

Bret,
I guess really there is some some stuttering and some flickering. I’ll try the flicker filter when I can, but regarding the fields being reversed, since I’m not working with interlaced video, can this still be the case?
Also, it’s possible that there is something I’m doing wrong when I output to DVD. It’s definitely worse when I watch it on a DVD.

[Mark Maness]

Something else to consider… Anytime you view a 24p timeline thru your monitor, it will flick and look like it is stuttering. That’s because monitors can only show 29.97 and you’re looking at 24. That’s the nature of working in 24p.

The really important thing to remember is to work in the best codec for your project, and from what you have told us, you should be working in Uncompressed for high quality graphics.

[Bret Williams]

The photos weren’t shot in DV. They’re jpegs or tiffs or something similar, right?

But you don’t need to go uncompressed for good quality imagery. A good bit of broadcast television is coming off DV.

[Mark Maness]

That’s very true! I will admit that there are alot of progrmas that are shot in DV but if you ask those who edit most of them are not working in the DV codec because DV does not do graphics very well at all.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com