-
Why does my Final Cut suck in animating motion and size?
I can animate text/sharp vector images in AE or Motion with pristine effects, however, when I do it in Final Cut Pro, it look amazingly sharp unrendered, but as soon as I render it, all edges become jagged, squarish, almost compressed looking. It’s definitely not interlacing issues —> it’s the edges of the objects that I animate… they lose their sharpness and become pixelly.
I tried every possible compression setting in my sequence to no avail.
I really like editing in FCP, as I find Motion and AE more cumbersome, but I can’t continue doing it for these projects, until I solve this little problem…
Does it have anything to do with anti-aliasing?
Has anyone here had same issues with FCP?
Help please,
Thanks,
Zebbler
-
28 Replies
-
as dave said, make sure your working in a high quality codec like uncompressed or ProRes. But if your talking about playback, then change your playback and frame rate settings to high. Your cpu might be able to keep up, so render. if you have a beefy machine you should be fine. if your talking output, check best quality for Motion filtering in your sequence settings, video processing tab and render quality tab use best quality and check always use best quality when rendering movies.
This creates longer renders but helps minimize the stair stepping upon output. Hope this helps.
OS 10.5.5, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 9 gb ram, with BM Intensity Pro card
-
What codec are you using and how are you feeding your external television monitor?
If you are only using the FCP Canvas to view your material, that is your problem.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
-
Why wouldn’t Final Cut upgrade its scaling mechanism? Aren’t FCP and Motion owned by the same folks?
I kept digging around trying to figure everything out last night – made some interesting discoveries about what went wrong with my edit, would like to share them with you – as knowledge is power. These are from my posts to Boston’s VJ email list (Glitch Night list):
Post 1:
Ok. I totally figured out most or all of my current issues.What happened was this:
Even though both my sequence and my HD clip were progressive, FCP misinterpreted my HD footage and mislabeled it as “field dominance = upper (odd)”
In reality, it should have been interpreted as “field dominance = none”After re-interpreting things by hand, it seems to have fixed the problem with the images 100%.
Pheew… I am really glad it got sorted out.
Thanks for your help guys, it was ultimately your prodding that led me to double check all of the format settings in FCP.Just to let you know what that looked like before the fix, here’s a link to two images – one from FCP sequence (with interlacing misinterpretation), and one from my original file:
https://zebbler.com/intcomp/fcp/source_still.jpg
vs.
https://zebbler.com/intcomp/fcp/fcp_still.jpg
Post 2:
There was another pixellation problem unrelated to the interlacing mislabels.
That one was compression related I think (although probably has something to do with FCP scaling mechanism as well?). I think apple intermediate compression in fcp previews funny (the beforementioned pixely lines):
https://zebbler.com/intcomp/fcp/owls.png (the owl on the right should be more pixely)To continue making matters more confusing, the video looks better than that if played back… and basically looks bad in FCP when stopped.
When exported with sequence settings, it looks good even when still for some reason.
And when the png still (see link above) was converted to jpg in Preview, the difference between the two sides for the most part disappeared in my Preview app:
https://zebbler.com/intcomp/fcp/owls.jpgThis stuff is painfully confusing on the fringes sometimes, but I guess sometimes someone has to make a ton of mistakes to learn something useful.
Keep keeping on,
Zebbler
-
I make most of my work for web or digital projection, so having it look good on a computer monitor is actually a must for me. So I do my previews on the same computer as I use to edit, either in FCP canvas or in QTPro after the export.
-
Peter,
As Will Shakespeare once wrote in the immortal Julius Caesar, “the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our FCP, but in ourselves.”
FCP doesn’t suck as you think, simple pilot error is more likely the cause of your issues.
Have you bothered to check your RT settings on the timeline?
Are you aware that, among many settings that affect the quality of video playback in the FCP canvas, that RT settings allows the user to control the quality of video playback?
Do you know that the quality is by default set to “dynamic,” and that playback of high resolution video, stills, or multiple layers that exceed the overhead of your system, cause playback to drop down to lower resolution playback unless you, the user otherwise intervene?
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
-
[Peter Berdovsky] “So I do my previews on the same computer as I use to edit, either in FCP canvas or in QTPro after the export. “
The FCP Canvas is degraded. Export and look at the image in Quicktime Player or change your Canvas to 100% scale and look at it that way. Quicktime player is better though.
FCP expects you to have an external monitor for broadcast / film work so the canvas is purposely degraded.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
-
[walter biscardi] “The FCP Canvas is degraded.”
Only if RT settings are left set to “Dynamic,” which is the factory default.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
-
Hi guys.
So – as I mentioned in the posts above, most of my problems were coming from Final Cut Pro misreading the field preference in my clips. I created the clips in question, so I knew what the actual field preference was, and could fix it in FCP.What if I have a clip that I didn’t create? Is there a surefire 100% way to find out what its field preference is? If FCP is making those mistakes, I would love to find a way to double check anything that looks a little off.
-
Man… This is still driving me crazy… Granted, exported videos don’t look as bad in QT player as they look when paused in Final Cut Pro… but it’s so confusing – unrendered – it looks perfect – https://zebbler.com/intcomp/fcp/x.png
But when I render it – it looks like pixelly madness. And I made triple sure all of the files are not interlaced, the sequence compression is set to AppleProRes, etc: https://zebbler.com/intcomp/fcp/y.pngI wish I could just keep the sharpness I see when it’s unrendered…
Zebbler (Peter B.)
-
Peter,
Do you have a video I/O card and a monitor?
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up