[Toni Carey]

Hi David,

I followed your directions and opened a new sequence, etc. and imported a couple of different versions of the picture that was giving me the worst problem. In every case, the pictures scaled without the wavy, watery effect! I don’t get it but I’m glad you told me what to do. I should mention that the photos that I blurred slightly and saved as tifs came out the best.

Also, it turns out I did end up spending 12 hours yesterday redoing the entire thing in Motion (and learning Motion at the same time — not really recommended but it worked). The pictures came out really so much better (quality wise) using motion (as opposed to FCP — which many of you tried to tell me) and then importing them into fcp after rendering them out just in quicktime format (video only).

Also, I should mention that my husband found a great write up on Ken Stone’s site that explained I should have had my canvas set up for 100% picture instead of viewing it as “fit to window” which really makes it look terrible. I suspect that this was the main problem — that at some point, I actually did fix the problem with tifs and blurs but because I was relying on this incorrectly set up canvas window and in my freakage had stopped burning reference dvds to check them on the TV, I didn’t realize I may have fixed the problem.

Yes, everyone, I promise when my income tax check comes in, I’m getting a monitor! I really can’t thank you enough David (and everyone who replied and helped with this insane problem that was a lot of my own unintentional making). God it’s gonna feel good to actually sleep tonight! 🙂

Thank you so much David! And thank you Jeremy Garchow, Richard Harrington (I’m buying his book!) Dave Jenkins, Gordon Gurley, and Richard Pengelly for their help. You guys are seriously the BEST!

Best to you David!
Toni

PS. If anyone reads this later looking for answers you should know that the best quality I got was using tifs with a slight blur on them and then timing the slideshow out in FCP and then duplicating it in Motion and exporting out as a simple quicktime (video only since I imported the music as a reference track in motion) and importing that back into FCP and marrying it up with the music track

Toni Carey
formerly Toni @ TONICK
http://www.tonickproductions.com
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo IMAC
w/500GB Internal HD
running MAC OS X 10.4.11
(always updated to current version)
1 LaCie 500 GB & 1 LaCie 1TB HD’s firewired to it
Running FCP Studio 2
Use Canon GL2 to shoot and digitize footage

[Toni Carey]

Hi David,

I did follow your instructions on duplicating the timelines and changing the sequence settings. (for DV50 and ProRes regular (not HD)) and re-rendered them out. Unfortunately they don’t look any different from the problem sequences but it was worth a try.

Thanks!
Best to you!
Toni

Toni Carey
formerly Toni @ TONICK
http://www.tonickproductions.com
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo IMAC
w/500GB Internal HD
running MAC OS X 10.4.11
(always updated to current version)
1 LaCie 500 GB & 1 LaCie 1TB HD’s firewired to it
Running FCP Studio 2
Use Canon GL2 to shoot and digitize footage

[Toni Carey]

Hi David,

Thanks for the post! I was in motion for the past couple of hours so I just got it.

I took a portion of the timeline and did as you directed. It’s going to take a while to render but I’ll try it both in DV50 and ProRes 1st and then post back to you.

Thanks again! I super appreciate it!
Best,
Toni

Toni Carey
formerly Toni @ TONICK
http://www.tonickproductions.com
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo IMAC
w/500GB Internal HD
running MAC OS X 10.4.11
(always updated to current version)
1 LaCie 500 GB & 1 LaCie 1TB HD’s firewired to it
Running FCP Studio 2
Use Canon GL2 to shoot and digitize footage

[Toni Carey]

Hi Richard,

Thanks so much for the help. Sorry it took a while to respond — I was just in motion for the last couple of hours learning it and reconstructing the sequence again. I don’t have ae yet but as soon as I learn motion, I’ll graduate to it.

In the meantime, I will definitely give your directions a try.

Best to you!
Toni

Toni Carey
formerly Toni @ TONICK
http://www.tonickproductions.com
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo IMAC
w/500GB Internal HD
running MAC OS X 10.4.11
(always updated to current version)
1 LaCie 500 GB & 1 LaCie 1TB HD’s firewired to it
Running FCP Studio 2
Use Canon GL2 to shoot and digitize footage

[Toni Carey]

Wow Richard, you are AWESOME to post to me. I just started watching your podcasts (in the hospital waiting room — hmm nothing like learning under stress). I am downloading the rest of them now and will definitely go through them.

Thanks for mentioning the misinformation angle — its difficult to separate the help from the unhelp when you don’t know what you’re talking about. I swear, if I survive this project, I will get your book and read it as well.

Many thanks again for posting Richard. I super appreciate it!
Best,
Toni

Toni Carey
formerly Toni @ TONICK
http://www.tonickproductions.com
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo IMAC
w/500GB Internal HD
running MAC OS X 10.4.11
(always updated to current version)
1 LaCie 500 GB & 1 LaCie 1TB HD’s firewired to it
Running FCP Studio 2
Use Canon GL2 to shoot and digitize footage

[Toni Carey]

Hi Gordon,

Thank you so much for your post! I was beginning to think only I was having these problems. What’s driving me crazy (besides the problem itself and that in the older versions this sort of thing would take me less than a couple of days) is that it seems no matter where I check online, no one has been able to solve this problem. It makes me wonder what everyone who encountered it did to fix it. Goodness knows no one would give a client something of such terrible quality.

I’m working on redoing the segment (yeah literally for the 15th time from scratch — good thing the client’s pictures are at least fun) using Motion and just doing them as stills with no movement. If that works, then I’ll try some movement.

Thanks again Gordon (and Jeremy & Danjen!) You guys are the best!
Toni

Toni Carey
formerly Toni @ TONICK
http://www.tonickproductions.com
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo IMAC
w/500GB Internal HD
running MAC OS X 10.4.11
(always updated to current version)
1 LaCie 500 GB & 1 LaCie 1TB HD’s firewired to it
Running FCP Studio 2
Use Canon GL2 to shoot and digitize footage

[Toni Carey]

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks again for the post!

On point 2) above…
2) DV timelines trash a lot of information that might have been there. It’s best to edit in a higher quality codec. I’d even say dv50 if you can.

Does this mean I should start a new project at dv50 and bring everything in there and redo it?

On point 3) above…
3) If you have other dv footage, leave the field rendering alone, but make sure to check that your stills have an even and whole numbered y value center point. For instance, if you still has a center point of 235, -230.34, change the y value (x,y) to 235,-230. Make sure every keyframe has an even y value. If it happens to be 235, -231, change -231 to -232 or -230 so it’s an even number. The x value doesn’t matter.

Sorry to be so dumb but how would I change the field rendering if I even wanted to?

Again, thanks for trying to help!
Best,
Toni

Toni Carey
formerly Toni @ TONICK
http://www.tonickproductions.com
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo IMAC
w/500GB Internal HD
running MAC OS X 10.4.11
(always updated to current version)
1 LaCie 500 GB & 1 LaCie 1TB HD’s firewired to it
Running FCP Studio 2
Use Canon GL2 to shoot and digitize footage

[Toni Carey]

Hi Dajen,

Thanks for the post! I’m viewing it at “fit to screen” and it’s terribly aliased. I can see I have to invest in a monitor but I’m stuck on this project.

And yes, unfortunately, I have made a dvd and checked it out on a tv and it’s too terrible to even think of using.

Thanks again,
Best,
Toni

Toni Carey
formerly Toni @ TONICK
http://www.tonickproductions.com
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo IMAC
w/500GB Internal HD
running MAC OS X 10.4.11
(always updated to current version)
1 LaCie 500 GB & 1 LaCie 1TB HD’s firewired to it
Running FCP Studio 2
Use Canon GL2 to shoot and digitize footage

[Toni Carey]

Hi Jeremy,

First, thanks for the reply!

Maybe I’ve made my photoshop pix too small (I redid them to 720×540 from their humongous original size of 3008 pixels wide by 2000 pixels high (but that original size didn’t work to begin with which is why I’m in this spot).

Okay, I’m still in FCP version 6.0.2. when I check for updates I just keep getting the QuickTime update 7.4.5 (There’s no update to FCP 6.0.3 showing, which you said you had) I didn’t update QT yet because I heard there were bugs with it interacting with FCP. Do I need to update QT first in order to have the update for FCP 6.0.3 show?

No, I don’t have a monitor yet but when stills looks this bad in the viewer I know I’m in trouble. I have rendered a quicktime out and run it on the tv and it looks completely terrible, which it never did before. It’s great advice to buy a monitor but I’m not going to be able to purchase one in the next few weeks which is when this project needs to be done.

Finally, what do you mean “get out of DV”. Are you saying I should open a new timeline and do different settings? This is part of a larger project that was shot on DV. If you’re telling me there are better formats out there to shoot on, I know this but can’t afford to make that jump yet.

Where would I turn the field rendering off? I’ve checked in system settings and user preferences but am obviously missing it.

Thanks Jeremy.

Toni Carey
formerly Toni @ TONICK
http://www.tonickproductions.com
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo IMAC
w/500GB Internal HD
running MAC OS X 10.4.11
(always updated to current version)
1 LaCie 500 GB & 1 LaCie 1TB HD’s firewired to it
Running FCP Studio 2
Use Canon GL2 to shoot and digitize footage

[Toni Carey]

Oops, I forgot to mention in the last post that the ~ represents your home on the directory tree.

Toni Carey
formerly Toni @ TONICK
http://www.tonickproductions.com
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo IMAC
w/500GB Internal HD
running MAC OS X 10.4.11
(always updated to current version)
1 LaCie 500 GB & 1 LaCie 1TB HD’s firewired to it
Running FCP Studio 2
Use Canon GL2 to shoot and digitize footage