[Ian Smith]

I’ve got a client waiting on it, so I’ve pulled an all nighter trying to figure things out.

In response to you Noah,… where did you want me to check that setting? I checked within Motion, and I don’t have that option. So then I checked within Final Cut, and I was able to change the sequence settings to 8-Bit Uncompressed. Then I re-rendered out a Motion Clip on the Final Cut timeline. Still, the clip is perfect at 100%, but 99% and smaller when scaling became blurred again.

As of last night and today I’ve had the best luck with the following:
Capturing footage within Final Cut Pro and dragging it to the timeline. Then pulling that clip into Motion where I key out green screen footage with a DVGarage plug-in. When happy, I go back to Final Cut timeline and export the footage at 640 X 480 Progressive. *I tried both (Lower line interlaced, and Progressive*
Then, I go into the main Motion project that contains several still images. I then import the progressive dv footage I just exported from Final Cut. I am then able to scale the video down to about 74%, and for the most part it seems to hold its clarity.

Naturally, this is a VERY long process to complete something that should really be as simple as clicking the down scale arrow. Something still isn’t figured out. This was just a long way to get a job done under time constraint.

Thank you very much for your help thus far!
Ian

[Ian Smith]

I’m sorry… the footage is filmed with a Canon XHA1, and shot in SD at 720×480.
In Motion, I have the Project Properties set to:
NTSC DV, 720 X 480
8 Bit, Dither (unchecked)
NTSC D1/DV at .90 pixel aspect ratio
Lower First (even) Field Order
BG – Transparent

It is being sent from Final Cut Pro if that makes any difference. I can list those specs to if wanted…

Thanks!

Ian

[Ian Smith]

It seems to lose it’s quality immediately after changing size before render and will look the same after render.

Literally, as soon as I press the arrow to make the video shrink from 100% to 99% and smaller it instantly looses it’s clarity. It looks as if it’s an interlacing issue or something. As I then move the entire video image vertically down one line at a time it will gain or lose depending on the odd or even number of moves, but maintains it’s quality loss.

Ian

[Ian Smith]

Ok, so it looks like no one else has experience this problem that has read this at least… BUT

I will give the results as I have found them with my given task.

The lower thirds text problems were fixed as written in the last post. However, I was incorrectly assuming that, that would be the same fix for the “lost motion tracking” from another project.
In this project, I added a graphic logo into the background on several fast moving high energy shots. Some of the shots I was able to simply add a “match move”, and Motion would do most of the work by making it look like it’s really there. However, some of them I had to manipulate several of the key frames myself, taking several hours to make look as good as possible. The project has been done for months now. However, recently I opened the project up again to export from Final Cut, and the Motion match moves were lost. When I went into Motion, everything is EXACTLY as I remember. It even shows the key frames for the match moves, BUT NOTHING HAPPENS! ??? I’m not sure how Motion could be ignoring itself.
Anyway, the quickest solution I could figure out was to highlight ALL of the key frames at once, and copy them into the same match move… and do this for every one in every file. Took around an hour total, but saved me from having to redo everything taking a day or more.

What I noticed in both cases, the text problem and the match move problem… it’s as if Motion on its own replaced the text in the first case, and key frame references on the other case with another.
With the text, it was replaced by another text format. With the key frames, when I would copy and paste, the COLOR of the key frames would be pasted in different meaning that you’re now manipulating another axis or field.

I know this post is a bit jumpy, and may be hard to follow along but I do hope that maybe someone will get something from it and not have the same problem with no solution in sight as I had.

Ian

[Ian Smith]

I would start by checking simple and easy to overlook places:

First, make sure in the text property, your font size is set proper. Anywhere over 24 should be visible. You can manually type in any number larger too. Type “text” and set it to 400 and it should fill the canvas if everything else is normal.

Second, check the Inspector, properties… and make sure your text is actually set to 100% size.

Third, and also very easy to overlook…make sure your not utilizing the Z deminsion, there by pushing your text WAY BACK and in the distance. If that happens you can make drastic increases in text size, and see very little difference because it’s a mile off in the distance.

Those are the more obvious things to check that are easy to overlook. I hope that helps.

Ian

[Ian Smith]

To add to this mess….I opened up another project that was giving me similar issues of ‘ignoring my efforts’ and the font seems to be different on my lower thirds graphics throughout.

I have the start to a solution however, but if someone else knows more about this issue I’d love to hear more about what causes it and if there are ways for me to prevent this in the future.

If I am in the Final Cut timeline, I can view the graphics and lower thirds text with the correct animations and text. However, if I then “open in editor”, the Motion file shows incorrectly and ignores my animations in one project, and text font in the other project.
If I go into my file directory on the computer, and open the Motion project from there, it is correct again!
THEN, if I go back into Final Cut timeline and “open in editor”, the Motion document is correct, where it wasn’t the first time I opened from the Final Cut timeline.
Now, when I export everything is correct.

It seems to be losing it’s cache and/or render files somehow without me moving or losing anything. Anyone else have a word on this?

Thank you for reading!

Ian

[Ian Smith]

Thank you much! Sometimes I have to dump the rendered files a couple times over if the twitch moves, but it has seemed to help the twitch as you suggested.

Ian

[Ian Smith]

Thank you for the input!

I am rendering as DVNTSC 720 X 480, RGB. I’ve also set the rendering to YUV, and SuperWhite… just to try things out. No changes.

When I export, I use QTime… animation codec, or none compression.

[Ian Smith]

I’ll happily respond to my last post… : )
Just so the answer is out there, I did exactly as I gathered from other peoples very helpful posts… Thank you again everyone!

I did simply increase the bitrate to what I considered extreme, and it raised the quality up to where I can’t even tell a difference between the QTime and the FLV.

Generally, I’ll finish with an FLV, pushed out at a bitrate of 700, and dimensions of 300 X 225. For that size of video, usually it is pretty clean and has great quality. Usually file size of around 7MB for the one to 2 minute videos.

BUT…

With the latest video I am pushing out must be larger,… 500 X 375, one minute, 30 sec video.
If I raise the bitrate to 1500, that is as low as I can go while still maintaining the crisp and clean quality (as the QTime file), as if straight off the Final Cut timeline!
Naturally, the only drawback as we all know is the increased file size. BUT, even then the file size is increased to 18MB, which honestly still isn’t that bad. If the client wants that much quality, they just have to take the extra load time with it. This was my happy medium for this client.

Once again, thank you everyone for your input. Newly professionals like myself are forever greatful!

[Ian Smith]

Taking the QTime file, then converting using On2, where do I really ramp up the quality to the highest? From what I am gathering people are saying make the bitrate higher? I generally put it at 700, rather than the default 448. Is that what I should be doing, or can/should I be going even higher?
At 700, my video footage is still lacking the quality needed, and shown in the QTime.

Here are most of my settings:
File: 512K Broadband High Vid (VP6-E FLV)
Video>Video Encoder Settings: Maximum bitrate – 700
VP6: Quality – Best

I also do my cropping within the Video>Video filter tab – 627 X 470 (thereby mathematically maintaining same proportions I believe.)

Is there a way to get better quality while still using On2, converting to an FLV?