Why does my Final Cut suck in animating motion and size?

[Peter Berdovsky]

All of my work as of late has been for computer monitors – to be distributed on the web. So I actually do need to make it look good on my screen.

I use a Mac Book Pro to edit, same screen to preview my work. I could output it to an external CRT monitor via a standard mac DVI to S-video adapter, but that would defeat my purpose here I think…

[Tom Wolsky]

What specific and exact formats are you working in? You talk about HD, you talk about field order, but what’s the bloody format and codec and frame size, what’s the media? Please give complete and exact information about your specifications of your media and of the sequence you’re working in.

All the best,

Tom

Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP6,” “Basic Training for FCS2” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop”

[Peter Berdovsky]

Well, if you follow the thread – my posts were made about different projects and at rather different times. The problem is all the same, regardless, and mostly deals with how FCP allows you to preview the video you are working on. I noticed that, regardless of my sequence settings (it could be HD, sd, whatever resolution or compression), when I have an image (lets say, like in my last problem post – something with really sharp red lines to it) in my sequence – unrendered – it looks just as it should – very sharp. As soon as I render it – the sharpness disappears – and the outlines get pixelly (see my images from a few posts up for an example).

People responding to the thread were correct, in that FCP seems to do a worse job previewing the video than, lets say, QTPro. After I export the video and preview it in QTPro – it doesn’t look nearly as pixelled (and it depends more on the compression settings at that stage). But previewing it in FCP seems painfully unreliable that way – the pixellating edges would drive me mad – because I seek a reliable digital (most of my work is for the web) preview of how something will look before I export it.
It’s especially a big problem because various video compressions / fcp actually seems to have a hard time with sharp lines of certain colors (i.e. red) – and without a proper way to preview it – I have to export multiple bit in different compressions and preview them in QTPro, instead of just seeing within the FCP timeline what looks best.

The pixellation would happen with any resolution/compression format I have tried in my sequence prefs.

Shrug.

Zebbler (Peter B.)

[Tom Wolsky]

FCP does a great deal to add real-time playback. That’s it’s primary purpose, real-time playback for editing. Every instance is specific. You cannot talk about generalities. Every format, every codec, every display will produce different results. Are you encoding and rendering to a video format? I know you want to deliver on the web, but if you’re working in SD DV for instance, that is a codec designed specifically for interlaced media to be viewed on a video monitor. That may not be your ultimate designation, but that’s what you are rendering in the timeline, and that is how you MUST view it. You can’t talk about DV viewed on a computer screen. The format is highly compressed and absolutely not designed for computer display. Many formats will only approximate their correct display when viewed with the canvas set to 100%, and even then they are not a true representation of the media. It simply cannot be done on a computer. Are you looking at the canvas set to 100% BTW?

All the best,

Tom

Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP6,” “Basic Training for FCS2” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop”

[Peter Berdovsky]

Yeah, absolutely, looking at the screen at 100%
I hate DV anyway, I mostly use motion jpegB, photo jpeg, apple intermediate, apple pro res 422.

Take a look at my comparison images here:
(unrendered, segment of the video at 100%): https://zebbler.com/intcomp/fcp/x.png
(rendered, segment of the video at 100% – looked the same! even if I switch my sequence settings (compression) to either one of these – motion jpegb, photo jpeg, apple pro res 422HQ – and re-rendered it in those compression formats): https://zebbler.com/intcomp/fcp/y.png

Notice how the outline around the red shape gets pixelly.
As I mentioned previously – it doesn’t look as bad when exported in quicktime player. But that’s my whole problem really – I want FCP to give me true representation / preview … and can’t seem to get that.

Best,

Z.

[Tom Wolsky]

I’ve seen the images. What specific codec are you using? The sequence cannot be four separate codecs. It can only render into one codec. What exact render specifications and codec are you using? Can you post the graphic file that is giving this problem somewhere on the web?

All the best,

Tom

Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP6,” “Basic Training for FCS2” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop”

[Peter Berdovsky]

As I mentioned before – the pixellation happened with any codec I tried. I am aware that a sequence can’t be all of them at once 🙂
The ones the reliably pixellated things for me were motion jpeg, photo jpeg, and apple pro res hq which I tried because they are supposed to be the best at preserving sharp crisp edges.
The still was taken from the motion jpeg b sequence.
Here’s a link to the original png file that pixellated:
https://zebbler.com/intcomp/fcp/hot_hand_logo.png

The only things that I did with it was shrink it in size in fcp and move it over to the right top of the screen.

I just replicated the problem in exactly the way I describe above, so I know I am not totally crazy.

Z.

[Tom Wolsky]

I’m sorry but I just do not understand why you cannot give exact information. You’ve posted images from the FCP interface yet you refuse to say how the images were created. I really do not want to hear all the different formats you tried it in. Just please tell us exactly what format this material is in. What exact specification is this sequence from which the posted images are taken from? Can you do that?

All the best,

Tom

Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP6,” “Basic Training for FCS2” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop”

[Peter Berdovsky]

With all due respect, I believe I answered your question in my previous reply. Quote:

“The still was taken from the motion jpeg b sequence.
Here’s a link to the original png file that pixellated:
https://zebbler.com/intcomp/fcp/hot_hand_logo.png
The only things that I did with it was shrink it in size and move it to the top right of the canvas”

Does that somehow not answer the question fully? I mentioned the precise type of codec used in the sequence in question, included the original file that would get pixellated and described what I did with the png file exactly within fcp?…

[Tom Wolsky]

My apologies. I missed the line about motionjpepb

This is what my export file looks like in ProRes. It is better color reproduction than M-JPEG B. The image is scaled and repositioned as exported as QuickTime and viewed in the QT player at full size.