Optimizing digital pictures for FCP projects

When importing digital pictures, I'm finding a lot of "zebra" effects on the photos when zooming in or out.
Is there a format (JPEG, TIFF, Photoshop, etc), size and resolution that is best to conform to prior to importing?
Difference between using it in a SD timeline and HD timeline?

Okay cool - yep I'm using an external Raid 5 as my Capture Scratch
A couple of weird things had happened such as a duplicate Capture Scratch folder and duplicate Audio Render Files folder and a duplicate Render Files folder appearing on my external Raid 5, on the same level as my Final Cut Pro Documents folder (not within it)
Literally: Sonnet d800 Raid5 > Audio Render Files
Capture Scratch
FCP Support Profile
Final Cut Pro Documents
Media
Render Files
STP Edited Media
STP Projects
STP Recording Files
STP Scratch Files
Like I say, I'll go for a complete uninstall and fresh install and hopefully the weirdness won't return :o)
The Capture Scratch folder and Audio Render Files folder and Render Files folder are empty folders but this is a little worrying that they're just choosing to appear where they feel like.

Similar Messages

Scanning Pictures for HD Project I Need Advice

I am about to *Scan Pictures for HD Project* I Need Advice. The scanner is a HP Scanjet G4050 my questions are:
1: At what resolution do I scan these pictures _+(300 or highest dpi available)+_
2: What color choice is necessary *(RGB vs CMYK)*
3: Can you please suggest points for creating a backdrop for the pictures (various sizes) in the Timeline
Thanks in advance

Scan the picture like you normally would. If the vertical resolution is 1080, you are fine. Don't worry about the 1280 width as black will be in that area not taken up with the photo. That part won't matter if it isn't 1280 if it is a vertical picture. If you don't have at least 1080 high, you might want to re-scan at a higher resolution. If you have it say, 2000 pixels high really no big deal except you don't need it that high and all that extra size slows down your system. If you want it at a lower resolution after you scan go into Photoshop->Image->Image size. Be sure and check "Constrain Proportions" before you change the dimensions in the top box for the height (where you are best using the units as pixels) That way the picture will stay in proportion. Don't use this second method to 'add' more pixels as the quality suffers when you go up this way. Rescan if you want MORE pixels.
All the above is talking about vertical pictures. If you have a really wide photo that is not very tall, use the same principle but keep the width constant. For example let's say you have a 2x6 inch photo. Make sure the width is at least 1280 pixels. Don't worry that the height will be less than 1080 because black will take up that space.
If you are going to do any zoom in and/or panning across a picture, you'll need to make sure it has more than the minimum pixels. For me a little goes a long way, so I zoom in slowly maybe 10-15%.
Sharon

Would it be possible to have 2 shared resources, one local containing all common topics and pictures for several projects, and another one remote containing all topics and pictures for collaboration purposes

Hi,
I was wondering, now that I discovered the advantages of Resource Manger, if it would be possible to have 2 shared resources, one local with common topics and pictures for several projects, and another one, remote, containing the whole projects, i.e. topics and pictures, for collaboration purposes.
The local one I intend to use it for my purposes to have common items (topics & pictures) updated in all projects where they appear, and the remote one I intend to use it together with my remote colleagues that might want to do changes in the topics.
This would mean that the common topics and pictures would be present in both resources, the local one as well as the remote one.
Thank you.

Thank you for your fast answer Rick.
I was merely wondering if it would be possible w/o having to use other products outside RoboHelp.
We are already using svn for a lot of other purposes and we are using that for the RoboHelp projects as well, however I was wondering if it would not be possible to have RoboHelp take care of the RoboHelp projects, and with svn to take care of the other things in the company.
Eventually, if it would be possible, I would think to sync all the local projects with the remote projects, then sync the local project with the local shared resources, and at the end sync the rest of the projects with the local shared resources.

Best locations for FCP Projects and Events?

Back in the olden days when FCE 4 and FCP 7 ruled the roost, it was generally considered that the best setup was to have the Project files on the System HD and the Capture Scratch (Events) on another.
Is this still the ideal setup or should the Projects be kept with the Events on an external HD?
Are there any advantages associated with the various configurations?

You might like and have a listen to Larry Jordan’s introduction
“Understanding Events and Projects”...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVlSYmOs_9A
Regards
Nolan

Export settings for FCP project

Shot on 7D - will be played from external to screen.
What would the best export be?
Thanks.

Righty oh!
Make a H264 in the same pixel dimensions as your Timeline.
Get a mini Displayport to HDMI connector - your projector has HDMI, right?
Your macBook Pro is a 2010 model?
Set quicktime player to full screen (command and F)
press the space bar to commence playing...........
Sit back and drink a beer.

Optimal Hardware/Software configuration for FCP

I switched from PCs to Macs about 1/2 a year ago to due overwhelming frustration at numerous Windows crashes. I have used Adobe Premiere Pro, Audition and Encore on a PC desktop to do video projects. I now have a 17" 1.67 Powerbook with 2gb of ram and the FCP suite. On a Windows PC, I tweaked everything to get the most out of the computer, partitioned a drive for the video projects, did regular defragging etc etc.
Now that I am on a Mac, I am not sure what needs to be done and what doesn't. I have an external 320 gb Firewire 800 HD that has my iTunes library, some backup files and will be the drive I use to capture video to and edit from. The drive is not partitioned. I have read that partitioning is not really necessary in Mac OS as the file management is much better. I would like to partition it anyway to make a small boot drive in case the hard drive on the Powerbook fails. Is there any benefit to partitioning a drive for video/sound files for FCP projects?
Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I haven't found much information on system optimization for FCP.
Thanks,
Philip
17" 1.67 Powerbook Mac OS X (10.4.3) 2gb of ram

Creating a back up system drive is a really good idea and it makes sense to partition your external drive to organize things. The other option is to just purchase another drive for that purpose.
If you want to back up your system, Carbon Copy Cloner is a great app.
There is a very nice program called Volume Works which will do partitioning and resizing partitioning on the fly. Very useful if you like to use partions as a way to organize system drives and media on the same disk.
Since the Mac OS is essentially Unix at the core, it was designed from the ground up as a robust 24/7 OS. There are maintenence things that need to be regularly run ( called CRONs) and there are other disk file and directory maintenence activities listed below. Other than that, if you REALLY enjoy getting down with text based interfaces and mucking about you can find all sorts of folks who are tweeking the system - for example - moving the location of the system swap file on the system disk. Not for the faint hearted...
General things to do ...
Repair Disk Permissions
Repairing disk permissions is simply good system maintenance and should be done as part of ANY upgrade and/or application addition. In addition it should be run regularly just as a preventative tool. It makes sure that the permissions on application files are set to the read/write/execute permissions they should have. Sometimes these are changed through the addition of new/updated programs which can cause varied and difficult to track down problems.
Verify Directory Structure
Disk Warrior is a file directory repair/optimization program. It analyzes and repairs your disk directory structure as well as optimizing it. It will pick up and repair problems that the OSX included Disk Repair Utility can not address. It is an essential tool.
Run the Cron Utilities
If you leave your machine on 24/7 these ought to run on a regular basis. If you turn the machine off at night (or, are like me - during the day - vampires anyone?) you want to force these crititcal utilities to run. Download and run a program such as OnyX which gives you a number of options regarding CRON, flushing caches, prebinding (aka optimizing) dumping log and temp files and so on and so forth.
Down load and have ready to run the application FCP RESCUE. You can find it on Versiontracker. It is another one of the those really useful tools. It deletes all your preference files when they become corrupt. Once the system is working again and set the way you like it, it will back up the same files so the next time things go south, you simply overwrite the corrupt with the good -sounds like batman doesn't it...
Take care of your machine and it will take care of you!
x

What are the recommended optimum import settings for pictures into FCP

I'm using FCS 7.0 and about to start a project / slideshow with about 700-900 pictures. The images are currently slides but will be converted into digital images. What would be the recommended settings / format to have the pictures converted into digital images for Final Cut? Also, any advice on the sequence / timeline settings as well would be appreciated.
Thanks!

Look at this first...it's designed for stills...and when you're done you can export it for use in FCP
http://www.boinx.com/fotomagico/overview/

I am having issues placing digital pictures in master templates in FCP 6

Hello everyone, this is my first post but I have been using Mac's for some time now with basically no issues.
I have two major issues:
First off, I am trying to place digital pictures which are enormous in the master template drop boxes, when I do this it cuts off the top and bottom of the image but the image still looks clear. The pictures I am importing are 1200 x 1800 jpg files, and were shot with a Canon EOS 30D. What I did was take all the images I needed and used Motion Pictures from Toast Titanium 8 and made a slideshow which I then exported as a QuickTime movie. I didn't know how to encode it so I used the DV/DVCPRO - NTSC codec and the dimensions were set to 3240 x 2430 since I thought that should give me the best quality image right?
Anyway, after doing this I have imported this QuickTime movie into Final Cut Pro and then I cut it up and placed little clips into each drop box. This makes it so I can see the whole picture now, but it still is not as high quality as the original pictures.
So, I have tried many times to export this master template with the pictures in the drop boxes and the finished QuickTime file looks terrible. I have not changed anything in the settings and when I export the quicktime movie I keep all the settings the same.
What do I need to do to get this to look better? Any ideas?
The other thing is that I have noticed a big reduction in quality from when I have the unrendered master template with the digital images in the drop boxes to when it autorenders after I have been away from the computer since I am stressing from this.
I am trying to take these pictures of high school basketball players and use the master template to have all the players pics and names come flying on the screen before the game comes on.
Any ideas? Why is the quality so bad? Am I doing something wrong? I have searched throughout the forums and found little information for digital images being imported into master templates, and I do not know if I am using a lossy format or something?
Any help is extremely appreciated!

First off, I am trying to place digital pictures which are enormous in the master template drop boxes, when I do this it cuts off the top and bottom of the image but the image still looks clear. The pictures I am importing are 1200 x 1800 jpg files, and were shot with a Canon EOS 30D. What I did was take all the images I needed and used Motion Pictures from Toast Titanium 8 and made a slideshow which I then exported as a QuickTime movie. I didn't know how to encode it so I used the DV/DVCPRO - NTSC codec and the dimensions were set to 3240 x 2430 since I thought that should give me the best quality image right?
Digital pictures are no different than any other still images, or movies, for that matter, as fas as Motion or FCP are concerned, they're just pixels.
Your image are way too big for video. Even if you're doing high def, you're scaling them down to fit many on the screen. Thye don't need to be an larger than, say, 1k on the long side.
You blew them up by a factor of 300% to get them out at 3240 x 2430 so now you've made all the pixels bigger than they used to be, you haven't added any pixels. Now you're biring that huge movie into FCVP and scaling it down by a factor of about 90%, wasting huge processing time and muscle and tons of disk space, totally wasted, and every scaling operation has introduced tons of artifacts.
Throw it all ways. Batch your photos through Photoshop to change them all into 1k jpegs and start over.
The templates are fun places to start but the mattes are (mostly) designed to crop and scale. so if you have images that are huge, they just get scaled to fit. You want to start with an image that requires the least amount of scaling.
Welcome to the family. Video is hard.
bogiesan

Optimal Still Rez for HD or Widescreen projects?

I found in the FAQs where it says the optimal size for stills to bring into a PE project is 1000 X 750, which makes sense for a 4:3 project. What about widescreen?
And what about projects that the end user might use one of those DVD players or receivers that upscales the video to a lot more than 640 X 480? Won't a higher-rez PE project, created with stills with more pixels, end up with a better picture?

The numbers in the FAQ apply as a "rule of thumb" for DV Projects, i.e. 720 x 480.
For HD Projects, those will go up, based on the Project.
Unless one is panning on a zoomed out image, the Project Frame Size is good. For panning on a zoomed out image, one obviously needs more pixels to work with. I go with the Frame Size and PAR for the Project, with the exception for those few images that do need panning, and then calculate what I will require. I try to keep the stills to just what is required, and might end up with one folder where most images are Frame Size, then maybe two other folders, where I need to do animation, and will resize to what is needed. I Import these into separate Bins (folders), that identify what is to be done, or what the size is. This keeps the Project size down to just what's required.
Many take another tack and will pick a number, like that 1000 x 750, which will allow them "wiggle room" with ALL images. That way, if they change their edit, they do not have to go back to PS and resize, like would have to.
Maybe it's now time for Steve to rewrite the FAQ to include some HD sizes, as well? Several have gotten confused with those SD figures. The last thing that one would want would be to have an HD Project, undersize the stills, and then have to Scale up in the NLE. They'd be better to have a few extra pixels and slightly Scale down a tiny bit.
Good luck,
Hunt

PROBLEM Compressing FCP PROJECT into file for DVDPRO

**this is my information...**
I'm EXPORTING a FCP project which is 45 minutes in length. I EXPORT it to COMPRESSOR. COMPRESSOR opens and shows the FILE in up LEFT box where I drag Presets. It gives me the PROJECT NAME but in the little picture box it just shows the FCP ICON. I know when I EXPORT a QT movie of a FCP project, a frame of the project appears in the little box where I drag the presets. This time it doesn't. So I don't know if that's an issue. I'm using DVD preset "DVD: Best Quality 90 minutes". It begins to compress the FCP file which takes roughly 2 hours. I check and it says it's "successful". BUT when I open DVDPRO and import the project to burn there is only ONE FILE not TWO FILES which would be the AUDIO and the VIDEO file. so DVDPRO does not recognize this and it won't burn. What do I do? THANKS for you help. Andy

Try exporting the sequence as a self-contained file using "current settings". This should result in one file with all the quality of what was on the timeline. Make sure this is in a folder located on your scratch (non-system) drive.
Then, open up Compressor, drag in the just created file, apply the "DVD best 90 minutes" preset making sure both the m2v and ac3 compressor actions are included and set the output directory to "Source".
Let it run.
Do you have .m2v and .ac3 files located in the same folder as the original self contained .mov file when complete?
x

Help! Audio for 16mm project, material to FCP and back again to 16mm

I am getting ready to send an AIFF file of the audio I created on FCP, working with video that was created from a 16mm to video transfer at my lab. They tell me the transfer was a non-drop frame transfer. The lab made a digital file from the transfer, which I imported into a FCP project with 23.98 sequence settings.
I want to compare the frame length of my WP to that of my video file so that I can determine how the audio house who will be transferring the AIFF to mag needs to compensate, and I am confused about how to measure the video file's frame length. If the sequence settings are at 23.98 fps, and the project runs from 1:00:05;12 to 1:11:49;08, to determine the frame length should I be assuming there are 24 frames per second or 30?
I don't have access anymore to the FCP so I can't check but a basic question is: if the sequence setting are set to 23.98fps, does that mean the timeline only has 24fps? When I convert at 30fps, my video file is 22 frames longer than my WP...
Thanks for any advice and questions--that all may be explained poorly...

When your project and sequence settings are at 23.98, it is for two main reasons. 1. ou are working with video footage shot at 23.98 and 2. you are working with film (24 fps), which was ultimately telecined to video which runs at 23.98. This is mainly implimented because you plan on either going back to a higher resolution "online" which you will be synching up the timecode with a better quality copy of the tape at a coloring house, or you will be using the edl from the 23.98 sequence to give to a negative cutter, so they can cut the negative correctly according to the timecode and how it links with the keycode.
I assume you are making a final product that will be on celuloid- an actual film print, not a video copy. is this correct?
Please clarify the following: did you shoot on film, get a telecine to a beta or dvcam, do you have a timecode burn-in on the tape and when you captured the clips into final cut, did you utilize Cinema Tools?
If you did run your clips through cinema tools, did you do it correctly (starting the process on the "aa" frame).
Is your project set to 23.98 or just your sequence? when you place captured clips onto the timeline do they have to be rendered? Is this a sync project or was it shot MOS?
And lastly, as I previously asked, are you sending all of your negative, the edl from FCP and the aiff to a negative cutter?

I have Video camera movies that are HD format.. I am doing editing work on them using Final Cut Pro, but using DV PAL format for the projects I am editing. When I then tried to copy my work done in FCP Project that's originally DV PAL , into a new FCP Pro

I have Video camera movies that are HD format.. I am doing editing work on them using Final Cut Pro, but using DV PAL format for the projects I am editing. When I then tried to copy my work done in FCP Project that's originally DV PAL , into a new FCP Project that is HD, and tried reconnect media with original HD movies (video), the sequence project got distorted for all the text, shapes used and all.. everything changed its orientation and scale.. Is there a way by which I can preserve my work done on DV PAL and switch it preserving its proportions, scale and orientation, but on a HD project sequence?? Appreciate your help and advice..

Yes. A couple of ways that might work.
First Way
What you need to do is load one of your hd clips in the viewer and edit into a new HD sequence. Does it display correctionly?
OK, select the clip in the hd timeline and copy (command-c). Now go to the HD sequence with the material that's distorted. Select all (command-a) and paste attributes (option-v) and choose basic motion and distort. That should maek things work. What won't work is anything that you've adjusted as far as basic motion or distort in your PAL sequence. That I'm pretty sure you'll have to redo.
Second Way.
Choose your original PAL sequence and do a Media Manage changing the sequence preset to the appropriate HD paramenters with the media offline. You then should be able to reconnect these clips with your original HD media.

I no longer have the ability to use my IPad at work as a digital picture frame after the upgrade. This was the main reason I bought a second iPad for my business. Apparently this feature is no longer available. Is there an app that would work the same?

Is there an app that will act as a digital picture frame ( slide show ) when in screen saver mode? IOS7 no longer has this feature.this is very upsetting as it is one of the main reasons I bought an iPad for my store.

You still have the option of using the slideshow feature in the Photos app. It's not in the lock screen anymore, but it is stll available there.

I am creating a video using the green screen option- I imported a picture for the background of the project and videotaped someone using a green screen. Is it possible to move the video of the person around so it is not blocking the picture behind it?

I am creating a video using the green screen option in iMovie. I imported a picture for the background of the project and videotaped someone using a green screen. Is it possible to move the video of the person around so it is not blocking the picture behind it?

To enable this right you need Acrobat, not the free Reader.
However, starting from Reader X it is possible to add simple markups to any file, unless it has been specifically disallowed by the creator of the file.

Best way to collect all video and picture files for a project

after effects has this great feature where you choose COLLECT and basically what it does is collects all your media files and puts them in a folder. What the best way to do this in FCP?

ThatChineesYouth wrote:
As a disclaimer; I used FCP's 'Media Manager' To duplicate my original project, to remove the excess unused clips and to preserve the right to keep specific audio files within the confines of the company. The file structure of the project, PROJECTNAME, may or has been altered as a result. Sequences might have blank spaces as a result of time remapped clips being incorrectly duplicated and media names and bin structure may be altered as 'Media Manager' caters not for the organization of the original project. These might or might not be corrected depending on how i feel at the moment of reviewing this 'duplicated' project.
I make special exceptions for clients that do their best to stay on my good side. This disclaimer was made specifically for a project that I had to redo when the original editor was too lazy to make it "watchable". They said I only had to make some changes.... almost 2 months later, I technically did the project over from scratch.

Optimizing digital pictures for FCP projects

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for