[Joe Barta iv]

Check your Sequence Settings.
Under the Video Processing tab make sure the Motion Filtering Quality is set to BEST.

Under the Render Control tab set Quality to BEST and check the “Always Use Best Quality When Rendering Movies”

I hope this helps.
Joe

[Joe Barta iv]

The next time you use stills, TIFs, JPGs, Etc., look at their information in the FCP Browser. Change the View/Browser Items to List, then scroll over to see the Frame Size column. There you can add the two numbers to get the total pixel count for the image. It doesn’t matter if it is 100% in the motion tab, if it is over 4000 pixels then FCP will have problems with it.

Have fun, keep editing!

Bars & Tone
SALUTE!

[Joe Barta iv]

Watch the size of the stills you are using, do not go over 4000 total pixels or FCP will give you the same errors you are describing. Re-scale the pictures in Photoshop using the IMAGE/Image Size. Add the Width and Height measured in pixels to get the total pixel count.

[Joe Barta iv]

The Sony MDR-V150 headphones are good for general field work, they are affordable and can be found at many electronics stores.

https://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=11035219

Bars & Tone
SALUTE!

[Joe Barta iv]

The best thing to do is Export the clips from the rendered timeline and then re-import them.

Bars & Tone
SALUTE!

[Joe Barta iv]

True, but be aware of PNGs with alpha channels, they don’t always play well with transitions in FCP.

Bars & Tone
SALUTE!

[Joe Barta iv]

Sometimes FCP just finds something it doesn’t like about the file. I’ve run into the same results with some TIFF files. Try converting the image to another format like .tif or .jpg.

[Joe Barta iv]

Set your Sequence Settings to 1280×720 (HDTV 720p) then drop your 4:3 clip into the timeline. Double click on it to bring it up in the Viewer. Click on the Motion tab in the viewer, scale your clip to 200%, or whatever it takes to fill it side-to-side in the Canvas window.

In the top center of the Canvas window there are three little buttons, click on the one farthest to the right, it looks like a crosshairs target. Select Image+Wireframe. Now when you click and hold on the image in the Canvas you can move the picture vertically or anywhere you want to suit your needs.

Bars & Tone
SALUTE!

[Joe Barta iv]

One option is to zoom in on the frame and crop the top and bottom to fit the 16:9. Another is to use something like Andy’s Elastic Aspect (a free plugin) in FCP to adjust how much or how little stretching is done in certain areas of the image. People are used to seeing the elastic aspect effect because it is how home 16:9 TVs treat a 4:3 image to fill the screen.

Joe

[Joe Barta iv]

Finalize the disc. If you need to use software on your Mac to rip the footage using Cinematize or Handbrake, then use a computer with a tray DVD to copy and burn it to a full size DVD. Then rip it on the Mac into whatever format you need. It’s all data transfer, you won’t be degrading the picture quality.

I’ve used Cinematize on several projects where the client brought in footage on DVD. I don’t know what it does, but the images come out looking better than they were on the DVD, very few compression artifacts.

Bars & Tone
SALUTE!