-
workflow for scanned drawings
Hi Everyone!
I am creating an animation in Final Cut from scanned drawings (all of them fine lined), and trying to figure out what would be the best work flow from Photoshop to FCP to Compressor to get the best quality video and avoid flicker.
The final outcome will be a 4:3 DVD projected 5ft x 5ft or 4ft x 4ft onto a wall using projector.1. My first question is how to prepare files in Photoshop. I currently have them saved as jpegs but I have read on this forum that TIFF is a better as it’s a less compressed format.
Also, should I resize all of the images to be 720×480 at 72dpi. I don’t need to resize them in FCP to zoom in, so not sure if 300dpi will be useful. Also, do I need to convert the images to 720×540 and then back to 480 as suggested in other places?2. What are the optimal FCP settings for such a project? I understand that I need to use ProRes422, and to run Flicker Removal filter to avoid any flicker problems. Are there any other settings I need to change.
3. As I understand, Compressor settings are standard – best quality DVD.
thanks for all your help!
-
3 Replies
-
[Marissa Cole] “Also, do I need to convert the images to 720×540 and then back to 480 as suggested in other places?”
Yes, this is a must, but use instead 720×536, this is better for DV resolutions. After you convert the image to 720×480 they will look wrong in PS but fine in FCP.You do want to set the dpi to 72 and not 300.
I would use ProRes and 720×480 resolution (the default is 720×486 but DVD is always 480)
But you may want to look into using Motion or AfterEffects to put this together.
-
Thanks Michael! Would it be better to use 16:9 instead of 4:3, I can go either way, especially if it will improve the quality.
-
You can build automated actions in photoshop to handle the import and export and a lot of pre-edit processing. One of the actions you might apply would be something to make the lines of the drawing a little fatter to avoid aliasing if your end product is interlaced.
In final cut, make a dedicated bin just for these stills, and think about what kind of default duration to set for these stills. If you have enough stills to animate frame by frame, then set the bin preferences to one or two frame’s duration for each file imported. If you don’t haev as many drawings, adn there will be seconds or more between them, set a more reasonable default duration like 30 seconds per imported frame.
I like Tif for this.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up