zooming in FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

The scaling algorithms are improved i n FCP5, but although downscaling is vastly improved, I don’t see much better on upscaling. AE or Shake has better scaling than FCP – remember FCP is an editor, not an effects package.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Bouncing Account needs new email address]

With all due respect to Mr. Nattress (he’s the best).

But, I have been producing and editing video for decades and have used all sorts of digital effects gear over the years (some units costing upwards of $100,000.00) and I get as good a results (in many cases, BETTER) in FCP as I ever got with the high-end gear.

1. You must render all effects to get full quality.
2. You must only check for QUALITY on an externtal video monitor, not on the computer monitor.
3. You must make sure that if you adjust the position of an image that the VERTICAL position is placed on an EVEN (not odd) INTEGER (no “percentages”).

Of course, if you want to zoom-in very “far”, you want a to use a larger, scanned image (1440 x 1080??)
But, I scale even 720×540 images in FCP up to 160% or so and, depending on the image, get very good results.

HOWEVER, if you are trying to zoom-in on a moving-video CAMERA image, the smaller the zoom-in, the better.

[Graeme Nattress]

Matte, the blurryness the original poster could be seeing could indeed be FCP playing one of it’s many nasty tricks that you advice will solve, however…. The scaling in FCP is, although improved in FCP5, still way below the quality of, say, Shake or After Effects, or any other compositing package I know other than perhaps Motion, which although I’ve not checked Motion2, wasn’t terribly good in Motion 1.

So yes, absolutely go with Matte’s advice to see FCP’s scaling at it’s best!! But if that’s still not good enough for you, then that’s just because the scaling in FCP is lame.

Thanks Matte for filling in the piece of the picture I missed in my speed to castigate the abilities of FCP. Appreciated.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Gunner Jones]

In addition to what Matte said, you need to change the motion filtering quality to Best in the Video Processing tab of the Sequence Settings dialog for good results. You should also have the Full and Preview Bars checked in the Sequence > Render menus.

This is getting to be a very common problem.

O&O-Gunner Productions
FCP-Avid-After Effects

[Simon Bronson]

Thanks for the response guys, unfortunately the scaling is still not sharp enough for the crisp video I’m using. Before I upgrade to FCP 5 I’ll continue to upscale my video through after effects for now.

cheers,

simon