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Why does my Final Cut suck in animating motion and size?
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What does it look like within your FCP sequence? Do you notice a difference between what the rendered clip looks like in the canvas vs. what it looks like when viewed in QT player?
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Hi Peter,
I followed this long thread with great interest, as I am confronted with a similar issue frequently, albeit in SD and still on FCP 4.5 (with a MBP 15″). Hence when I have specials to do like 3d animated text, I ask for help from someone with motion (as I am currently working on now). Nonetheless, I’m learning a lot from your thread regarding sequence compressor settings and will have a lot to ask as soon as I upgrade, but in the mean time, let me add some advice: I also do a lot of work intended for the web. I ALWAYS work on 2 screens (at least) the 2nd being a straightforward and inexpensive Siemens Fujitsu W-19 coming straight from the DVI port. I have my timeline and tools on the W-19 while editing and the canvas on the laptop, and then I switch layouts the other way around when working on the picture itself. This could give you a much better idea of what computers will be getting, but the guys are right of course that occasionally checking a QT is a truer reference. In fact, I always have a PVM linked through a player so I see both tube and LCD results at the same time, sometimes to create a compromise between the 2, otherwise to choose specifically for what end format I’m working for. How you can comfortably work on one screen (if I understand correctly) beats me. But thanks for the interesting information that I’ve learned from in turn. Hope my 2 cents was of any help.
Michael Brown
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I have exactly the same problem. Unrendered stills (preview) animate perfectly and look great but when rendered they seem to look downrezed and missing a field. This is with any codec. This is also a recent problem since upgrading to FCP 6.04. It does not seem to be a settings issue. My stills are not oversized but I do think it is a bug in how FCP scales stills in motion. FCP did not have this problem before as I have been animated moves on stills for seven years and have just recently run into this issue.
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Well, I am glad that at least I am not alone in noticing this guys… I was starting to feel a wee bit crazy there… Yeah – I think FCP should definitely improve its still animating/preview process – currently I am forced to use After Effects or Motion to do very simple animations that would have been easier to do in FCP (if the quality didn’t suffer)…
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I think I have found a work around for this issue. You must use the motion tab to set your keyframe values for scale. Do not use the handles in the Canvas. Make sure that the starting value is a round number and not a decimal. This worked for me. My still moves now render at a beautiful quality with no stair stepping etc. All other settings are just set to “normal.” I think this issue might be similiar to the problem one encounters in trying to do a credit roll with an off speed with the resulting flicker.
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Hi Michael,
Thanks for hinting on the similarity with the credit rolls! But do you use keyframes in the motion tabs to make up for jittery credit rolls, and if so, how? Or on the other hand, what is an “off” speed, and what is not? Something with figures or a golden rule one can go by or just by fooling around (till your head explodes)?
Michael Brown
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“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.”
This is a major flaw with FCP, as more and more people do internet only, or computer playback only,
a video output is redundant.Right now I am doing a 1080p30 production which will be shrunk down to youtube res later.
So, having apple have a great CPU monitor AND a great output to Video would be a plus! -
Peter, I’ve just download your logo, HotHand.png, and sized down and ran my own test using the ProRes 422 720p59.94 easy setup. With the Canvas set to 100%, yes you get pixelation. And you will. Just as everyone else said FCPs Canvas is degraded on purpose. If you had an external monitor or even a consumer TV hooked up, you would see that the image file looks completely fine. No stair stepping at all. Even if your final destination is web, you should still be monitoring externally. About 1/2 the stuff we create is for web and I always have my monitor on to check for safe zones and playback. FCP canvas will never look as good as your final QT output for the playback on an external monitor.
As I mentioned before, you can change the Video Processing and Render Control tabs in your sequence settings to help a bit. 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
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