Jagged Text from Motion to FCP5

Question

Hi.. still having trouble with jagged text from Motion 2.1.2 to FCP 5.1.2 (OSX 10.4.8), PAL DV 720 x 576. Would very much appreciate some insight. I have done a butterfly animation with some lense flares and text. Concept is butterflies come in from off screen and land on attractor to reveal text message with lense flare behind. Views great in Motion on fit to screen, resolution fine. But import as .mtn to FCP and text very disappointing, very noticeably having trouble with resolution, even noticeable on Viewer and Canvas, but really awful in full screen Digital Cinema Desktop Review because the text is so obviously not 576 lines. Something is happening in the import to destroy it despite trying everything I could see in this forum. I can actually count the lines on full screen, enough to estimate I am only getting approx 230 vertical lines instead of 576.
In both Preferences/Presets and Project Properties PAL I have set Broadcast SD 720 x 576, Pixel Aspect Ratio PAL D1/DV 1.07 , Lower (Even), 25 fps. Under Project Properties I have additionally tried 16 bit, and under Render, set anti-aliasing to Best, and tried switching on and off Dithering, and also increased motion blur to 50. I have also switched off interlacing (to None) in both Motion and FCP as one forum comment suggested. In FCP I import the clip as a .mtn file, and change properties to Premultiplied Black and Lower/Even line order prior to dragging into Viewer and then Canvas. But the Motion text already looks jagged in both these screens before I even render in the timeline. I learned a while back under Avid XPress Pro to give text gentle movement diagonally in order to create the illusion of higher resolution than if motionless. But once in FCP, it "wobbles" very noticeably as the application attempts to blur the distinction between the 230 vertical lines on the screen. As I mentioned above, it plays perfectly in Motion on a full screen, with no obvious degradation in vertical resolution, but it's very disappointing once in FCP.
In FCP I have tried just about every setting, but nothing so far addresses this problem. The main settings are 720 x 576 CCIR 601/DV PAL (5:4) Pixel Aspect Ratio CCIR 601 (720 x 576). I've been careful to also check Sequence Settings in addition to User Prefs, Audio & Video Settings and also System Settings. Under Sequence Settings/Video Processing I have tried RGB, YUV 8 Bit and high precision YUV in case that made a difference. I also did several exports to Quicktime .mov, including trying Lossless + Alpha, but no difference, and in any case that work around loses ability to update on the fly if something is chnaged in Motion.
Perhaps I have missed something obvious. I would very mcuh appreciate any assistgance before I go back and delete the text from Motion and do it in FCP instead. I really hope tht others have found solution which works within Motion. I have enjoyed crteating the animations and it will be a great product if I can do the text within Motion and export without loss to FCP.
Thanks heaps...

Answer 1

Thank you so much for all your replies and interest in my problem - very helpful. I have just come up for air (after several long nights of editing) and the project went out on time, RUN LIVE FROM MY MBP. Your replies saved me a lot of time, pointing out that the resolution was actually ok (for SD), but I just wasn't seeing it on FCP because it was only showing one field, and scaled at that. I firstly tried playing back with the Canvas settings suggested by Mark and it appeared as smooth as it did within Motion. Then I tried viewing on an external monitor via Firewire - all resolution great (at least for SD).
Typically I publish on DVD, but the above tests gave me enough confidence to print to DV tape as a backup (and I loved the user interface - so easy to add bars and tone etc). But I took the risk of running my MBP live at the event, complete with my SATA RAID ) drives and the M-Audio 1418, which I found worked really nicely daisy chained off my DSR-11 deck. This produced far better sound for the live event and gave me enough comfort that I could always run directly off the DSR11 if any of my computer gear failed. The second advantage was that it allowed me to cue precisely synchronised with the live drama, from which the butterflies flew onto the screen - exactly on time as the talent opened the gift box on stage. If you've tried to cue from dvd or dv deck you'll know what I mean. Some consumer dvd players go to sleep if the standby period is too long, and the DSR11 creeps along frame by frame to save tape wear, which can really get in the way of live events. Also, I foudn that the DSR11 needs to be cued at time code prior to the intended start point in order to allow adequate sound buffering.
But with my MBP set up - it was the easiest incorporation of video in to a live event that I had ever done. It worked flawlessly - all I had to do was hit the MBP space bar as the talent guestured with her hand out of the gift box onto the screen - butterflies flying out exactly on time.
Thanks again everybody.