Major Graphic BUG???

Question

FCP6/HDV appears to have the same Bug that FCP5 had for a while. Imported Photoshop files (any still format) show up looking like they are single fields instead of frames. In other words, every other scan line of pixels is not showing.
Playback Quality changes don't help. And the truly weird thing is that the same file looks perfectly fine in the Viewer, but not in Canvas.
Rendering doesn't help.
Native Photoshop, JPEG, TIFF--all look horrid. Files that played last week just fine in PS 5.x now look like a mistake.
FCP5 had this bug--similar, but not exactly the same behavior--when it was brand new, and it took Apple months to realize it and fix the mother. In FCP6 the major difference is that the still image looks horrible as soon as it is inserted in the timeline. FCP5 looked fine in the timeline in Canvas, but lost integrity when rendered or viewed running.
All effects, titles, matte painting FX, still overlays, still insertions are affected.
Please, somebody, tell me there's a switch somewhere that fixes this?
-iNova
Dual 2.5GHz G5   Mac OS X (10.4.9)  

Answer 1

While I'm not monitoring on an external monitor, the rendered file plays back with a perfectly clear background HD image and a flawed title overlay, so it's not the reviewing apparatus or conditions. Digital Cinema review shows the effect, too. Exported QT files show it, too.
What's significant about RT is that at High, the background is fine and the overlay still is corrupted, appearing to be 1/2 vertical resolution while maintaining full horizontal res. At Medium, being 2 x 2 pixels per detail, both clean background and overlay still look the same. At 50% scale Canvas viewing they look the same, too, which is to be expected. I'm not talking about field artifacts in motion. Those are easy to see on the computer monitor.
In the Viewer window, enlarged right next to the Canvas window, and both at 100%, pixel-direct viewing, the Canvas image is corrupt and the Viewer image of the same file, thrown into the View window from the timeline, looks 100% quality.
Since the Viewer window can portray the still bitmap image while looking perfect, and can portray moving footage perfectly, the issue seems to be in something that the Canvas window's handling routines are doing with the JPEG and .psd files. Since it does the same flaw with TIFF files, it seems logical to assume that it's not the incoming format, rather it's something in the way the timeline/Canvas handles bitmaps.
Are you seeing stills pixel perfect? Scale a 6MP digital image down to 1920 x 1080 and JPEG it, importing it into FCP6. Then view that in Viewer and Canvas at 100% scale after you drop it into the timeline.
One extra oddity; PS files import into the Browser as .psd format (1440 x 1080= exact resolution) self-contained sequences.
That's the way they show up normally--and must, if they had layers. If you double click on the source .psd file, opening it as a sequence, it shows up in its own timeline, and in the Canvas without the mangled look. It looks right.
But drop that source file into another timeline--the way you must to use it in an edit--and the corrupt appearance returns.
So we can add a new bit of mystery solving: It's possible for the Canvas to see a still image file with clarity--IF that file was imported as an existing sequence, the way .psd files do. But somehow still files of several formats can land in the timeline with this flaw. Making titles in Photoshop very ugly. Plus this: Do anything to the OK looking .psd image and render that--poof! The flawed appearance returns.
I'll bet Premiere doesn't make this mistake.
It's not a scaling artifact. It has the look of an image minus every other scan line, showing dramatic aliasing on shallow angle contours and loss of vertical resolution only.
Too much head scratching.