Tom Brooks
Forum Replies Created
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OK, now it’s getting complicated. I tested a psd and a jpg saved out of Photoshop with and without the round trip to Motion. These looked the same whether round-tripped to Motion or not. No difference between Normal or Best render control either. These files were created at 1280×720, square pixels. The screen grab was an odd size, 1317×943. So, is it something about the size that changes how FCP or Motion deals with the picture?
I took the screen grab that exhibited the difference between Motion and Non-Motion versions and cropped it to 1280×720. Voila, now there is no difference between the one sent to Motion and the one not sent to Motion. I’ve seen examples of this before. Somewhere in the application, graphics that are exactly sequence-size are treated differently than those that are a different size.
Maybe some of the older hands with FCP can explain some of this.
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Exploring a little further, I seem to get a sharper effect when I change the FCP sequence setting, Render Control, Master Template & Motion Project, Quality = Normal instead of Best.
In other words, BEST = blurry. NORMAL = sharper. I have no explanation at the moment. It does explain why BEST rendering does wonders to settle down moire and edge problems on moving stills (at the expense of much longer render time).
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I duplicated your test and I see what you mean.
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[Tim Wilson] “This is a full-contact peer-to-peer community. Our survival, prosperity, and good reputation depends on it. “
Really well put, Tim. I was attracted to the COW from day one because I felt the information I got here was so straightforward and useful and it comes from people solving the problems themselves on a day to day basis. Seriously, when you are attempting to learn Final Cut with the manual and tutorials and working on deadline at the same time, the forums here can totally save your butt. It’s harder to understand the relationship between leaders, writers, and advertisers and how they all fit together. I get it better with your explanation.
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You can find a lot more in the DVD Studio Pro Forum by searching on 16:9 and Letterbox. Basically, you export using the standard DVD presets in Compressor. If your FCP sequence is 16:9, the MPEG-2 will be flagged as 16:9 in Compressor. In DVD Studio Pro you may need to set the aspect ratio of the track to Letterbox. This is in the track inspector. Same goes for menus. By setting to Letterbox you’ll get letterbox on 4:3 displays and widescreen on 16:9 displays.
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If I understand it right, you need your shooters in 8 countries to get you something faster than the two or three days shipping will take so that you can start editing. It can be a complicated process and the chances of getting the right result from 8 different sources could be tricky. I suggest that you allow the sources to send you footage in 25p for simplicity and you edit in 25p.
Would it work to have them place all material on a single 25p timeline and then send you two exports of that? One in HD on hard disk via DHL shipment, the other lo-res (suggest Offline RT) via ftp?
Your 24p footage would have to be converted to 25p for the edit. Compressor can do this well (p. 265 in manual is about speed changes.).
When it’s done, the whole thing can be converted to 24p for conversion to DVD.
As an alternate approach, you might be able to convert the lo-res to 24p after downloading it from ftp and then do the same conversion to the HD stuff when it arrives–the idea being that you could again reconnect to the converted HD material with frame-accurate results. This could allow you to edit in 24p.
Just an idea to ponder. A few extra days would make everything so much simpler, eh?
PS-I see Sean has suggested Cinema Tools. Perhaps a better option for you.
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Hey Ian,
As Bret suggested, the Levels filter in FCP can do a pretty clean job of clipping only those last couple of values close to white without affecting the rest of your values. Preprocessing in this way could get you closer to what you want and then a minor tweak inside the Flix app could get the rest. Your video will still need its tonal range expanded to look its best on computers, but at least you’ll have little to no variation in that background before you send it to Flix.
-Tom -
As Rafael suggests, you should look for a non-AVI workflow. You are running into a 4GB file size limit for AVI export from Final Cut. That is why short AVI’s work but not long ones. AVI is really an outmoded container format for computer video. With Quicktime there is no such limit, although you will have similar trouble if you try to export to a network drive or attached drive that is formatted in FAT32 format. Again, there is a file-size limit of 4GB.
A possible workaround would be to export a Quicktime movie first and then use Quicktime Pro to change that to AVI on a PC system. But really, avoid AVI altogether if you can.
Final Cut Pro 6.0.5, Mac OS-X 10.5.5, Quicktime 7.5.5, Adobe Prod Prem CS4, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V6, 8.5GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT 256MB, G-RAID 2x1TB FW800, 6TB RAID-5 (Enhance E8-ML, Highpoint 2322), Panasonic HVX-200P P2. Also MBP 17″ Core 2 Duo 2.5, 4GB, GeForce 8600M GT 512MB.
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[Ian Smith] “I have read forums all over Creative Cow, and others and I see others have reported similar issues. Most commonly it is suggested… Final Cut’s white cannot go as white as RGB-255. It only get’s to around RGB-235. And it’s suggested to use After Effects as it will get up to RGB-236. “
That is basically the problem. Video uses a narrower set of colors than computers use (16-235 vs. 0-255). I don’t have FlixPro, so I can’t speak to its capabilities, but the general rule is that you need to do some careful preprocessing of your video clip in order to stretch its contrast to the full 0-255 gamut. Squeeze has contrast, brightness and gamma filters to make these adjustments. The use of “super white” rendering only affects imported graphics if I remember right, so that won’t help your live-shot backdrop. I’m interested to find out how others approach this.
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Did you shoot 720pN24? Control-click one of the clips in the Browser and get the “Item Properties.” What is it?
Final Cut Pro 6.0.5, Mac OS-X 10.5.5, Quicktime 7.5.5, Adobe Prod Prem CS4, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V6, 8.5GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT 256MB, G-RAID 2x1TB FW800, 6TB RAID-5 (Enhance E8-ML, Highpoint 2322), Panasonic HVX-200P P2. Also MBP 17″ Core 2 Duo 2.5, 4GB, GeForce 8600M GT 512MB.