Don Smith
Forum Replies Created
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You’re a gentleman and I’m so glad I didn’t offend. It’s just been a crusade for me since I learned about it in the 7 days years ago because, you’re right, the myth of dpi in video is prevalent. For me, I wasn’t born knowing this. I bought into the myth for while myself until I was ‘educated’.
I wrote, but deleted because I had gone on too much by then, a paragraph about cautioning how having resampling checked could trick a person into thinking that dpi mattered but all Photoshop (or whatever app you’re using) is doing is making the changing dots-per-inch fit into the unchanging inches high and wide that would be printed.
Thank you.
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RE: “300dpi images will bring any NLE to a halt no matter what size they are.”
Simply not true.
Tell that myth to Final Cut Pro X now playing my 20,000 dpi image as easily as the same image next to it but with a dpi of 20.
I had done this test before but I repeated it just now…
Same picture, only 368×580, but three versions; one at 20 dpi, one at 2,000 dpi and one at 20,000 dpi. It made absolutely no difference in FCPX even on my old 2006 Mac pro. No difference in performance. No difference in display size. No difference in how it looked.
No difference. That’s because whether the picture has a high or low dpi setting, the pictures to the NLE are the same. Both contain the same number of pixels (368×580). All the NLE cares about is how many pixels it has to push. It doesn’t care how far apart they’ll be when printed to paper.
DPI is just a printer instruction. You can ignore it for video.
What CAN happen is that the more pixels in the picture (unrelated to DPI) the more processing power it needs from the NLE. But you cannot reduce the number of pixels in a picture by reducing its DPI count. The two parameters have nothing to do with one another. You fix NOTHING for video by reducing the dpi of an image.
Final Cut Pro 7 was a 32-bit application. Pixel counts greater than 4000×4000 would choke it regardless of its DPI setting. When I did my test years ago on Final Cut Pro 7 I could put in a picture with a MASSIVE DPI number and as long as the pixel count wasn’t larger than 4000 pixels x 4000 pixels it would work fine.
FCPX is a 64-bit application and can handle much higher pixel counts. But, again, pixel count and dpi have nothing in common. One does not affect the other in video.
If an image is slowing your performance and you know your system and software is running well then you can reduce the number of pixels for the NLE to push but you don’t do it by reducing the dpi number. You’ll be wasting your time.
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Hate to point this out but DPI has no effect on the file size of an image.
You can test this by saving the same picture with different DPI settings and the file size will remain the same. It may happen that the NLE will display the picture differently depending on the DPI setting but that has nothing to do with file size.
DPI is a printer instruction on how far apart to print each pixel. Some people think that the higher the DPI the higher the picture detail. Nope. Detail is how many pixels make up a given area. Want more detail? Look at the dimensions of the image. A picture of, say, 10 pixels by 10 pixels will be 10×10 regardless of the DPI setting. With a high DPI setting those 100 pixels will just be printed closer together on paper.
The detail of a picture depends on how many pixels make up the picture and that is determined by its length in pixels times its height in pixels. You don’t create new pixels or take away pixels by changing the DPI setting. DPI instruction to a printer tells it how much to spread out the printing of the pixels.
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Hhhmm… you viewing window is only 38% zoomed so there goes my first thought that your window is not sized correctly (Shift-Z with the window active to make sure). The only other thing I can think of is that in the Inspector for that clip, down near the bottom under ‘Spatial Conform’, you might have changed the setting. It is normally on ‘Fit’. Try the settings there.
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In my case my whole computer suddenly acted like it was trying to run through a swimming pool. One day I launched Activity Monitor (in Utilities) and saw that some ‘agent’ was gobbling a huge amount of CPU time. I double-clicked on the listing and quit the process and I was back to normal. Couldn’t notice any other change. FCPX ran normal for a couple of weeks with the Mac Pro (3,1 in my case) being powered off and on. Then yesterday, it sneaked up on me again. I realized that I was fighting FCPX. Checked and, yup, it was that ‘agent’ back again. Quit it again. Good again.
And, to suggest the obvious, delete your FCPX prefs with Preference Manager. Google it and it usually comes up to the top of the list. Free. Great. You don’t lose any custom keyboards but you must reselect one of them after preferences delete.
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I have mObject. It has a library of 3d objects that are truly 3D but if you put the mObject in Motion twice in the same time frame then you’ll be back to the old 2.5D limitations of Motion. However, you can put a second object into one mObject instance.
The MotionFFX.com YouTube channel is here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/motionVFXcom
One of those tutorials explains all this.
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OK.. I’ll risk looking silly and ask; Do you by chance have ‘Proxies’ selected in the upper right drop down in the Viewer? The same drop down where you can choose Scopes and the like?
Just covering the basics.
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I have exactly the same system, Mac Pro 4,1 (2009) and the Ati Radeon 5770 graphics card at work and experience the same sluggishness. However, I come home to my mid-2012 MacBook Pro (Thunderbolt) and don’t. I have the Full Monty new Mac Pro on order and CANNOT WAIT to have more fluidity under my fingertips!
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As for the Magnetic Timeline… While I still have a nit or two about it I myself I could never go back to 7 or any track-based NLE for that matter. Just couldn’t.
As for your audio clips connected to the wrong things I have a couple of suggestions…
I, and many others, will use the primary storyline for the ‘spine’ of the edit. If all is based on one or more audio clips then make those audio clips your primary storyline and connect relevant video to the audio it represents. That way, move the audio and the right video will always move with it and keep everything organized.
Or…
Know that there are ways to approach your issues… For one, holding the Option and Command keys while you click on a connected clip will move its connection point. When I’m in that position I’ll connect a connected clip to another spot, possibly a clip that won’t be changing, to get my edit done.
Also know that you can override a connection. The grave (gr-AH-ve) key will invoke a yellow circle with a connection icon in black. Looks like a 7th Cav patch to me. While the Override Connection key is enabled you can move a clip in the primary storyline without dragging along any clips connected to it. There’s a trick to keeping the Override Connection key in effect. Press the grave key (that’s the key to the left of the ONE key on the top row at the far left) and while holding it down press the Command key, then release the grave key first followed by the Command key. I call it a ‘rocking’ motion. With the 7th Cav patch visible hold the T key and click and drag within a clip in the primary story line and you’ll slip the video within that clip without influencing any connected clip.
Also, don’t forget the Position key – ‘P’. It sort of takes you back to acting like a track-based editor.
That’s all for today but I’ll leave you with my absolute dedication to FCPX. I sometimes have to deal with 7 and I just cringe over how it feels like a buggy whip. Just out of its time.
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I would think it depends on the size of the delivered product and it sounds like you’ll deliver it at a smaller size than the size of the raw material.
I would keep it at its natural state for as long as possible and only trim and compress as needed at the last moment. My thinking is that remapping the source to a smaller size reduces quality and then compressing for delivery will reduce quality a bit more.
So, while I can’t say definitively not to downsize now I can only suggest to compress once for delivery and not introduce more compression in the workflow. Just my opinion.
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