NEED HELP! Poor quality stills and text

I'm finishing up a corporate video with lots of still pictures and text. Unfortunately, It's so bad I can't show it to the customer. As always, the video footage looks great but the still photos and the text looks very, very bad when played on a DVD. I compressed the MOV file with Compressor using the Apple-Best Quality DVD settings. I'm beginning to think stills and text will always look bad on TV. Is there a way to improve this? Is Compressor the best tool to compress my file?

Getting still images to look good at DV resolution and color depth can be a struggle.
A couple of tips.
1.Do not use images with more pixels than you absolutely need. If you are in the US (NTSC) and the images don't have any pan/zoom moves, size them to 720x480 (DV pixel ratio) in Photoshop before importing them into FCP. FCP is not a very elegant scaler.
2. Make sure the contrast in the images is under control. Keep the whites below 90.
3. It the images have a lot of high contract detail (think leaves in bright sunlight), sometimes a slight vertical gaussian blur of .3-.5 pixels can help.
4. If the total running time of the material is under 60 minutes, use a Constant Bit Rate of 6.5 or so in the Compressor settings.
If all of these don't really do it for you, and if the material is all stills, you might try to do the slide show in Fotomagico or Motion then output it as a video file for import into FCP.
Good luck,
x

Similar Messages

  • Updated my iPhone4 last night. I need help with the cloud and texts. I'm not getting text.  Thx

    I updated the phone, and now I can't get texts. All our info is merged-- and other phones are getting my messages.  I'm not sure where I need to go to turn off or on the right info on cloud and also with messaging.
    Thanks.

    Check settings>iCloud, settings>messages and settings>FaceTime. Don't use the same apple id in all devices.

  • I need help importing navigation bars and rollover buttons from fireworks?

    I need help importing navigation bars and rollover buttons from fireworks, drop down menus and rollover states won't work!
    Thanks

    In my experience, the code created by graphics apps is less than satisfactory. And image based menus are very awkward for several reasons. 
    #1 If you decide to change your menu later, you must go back to your graphics app and re-craft the whole thing.  After 2-3 times of this, it gets old in a hurry.
    #2 Image based menus cannot be "seen" by search engines, screen readers and language translators.
    #3 CSS styled text menus are better for your site's visibility, accessibility and they are a snap to edit in Dreamweaver.
    That said, if you're still married to image based menus, use Fireworks to create images only. Use Dreamweaver's Image Rollover Behaviors to create your rollover scripts.
    Nancy O.

  • I need help, yesterday I installed and reinstalled the Yosemite system and take long to turn on my laptop, the bar takes to fill, and I'm worried. Can you help? thank

    I need help, yesterday I installed and reinstalled the Yosemite system and take long to turn on my laptop, the bar takes to fill, and I'm worried.
    Can you help? thank

    revert back to Maverick that is what I had to finally do. This was the worst upgrade I have ever seen. Hopefully you have Time Machine backup and can revert back. It was pretty painless except for a few issues. I will wait until Apple gets their stuff together on this upgrade or may never will.

  • Need help with Blog, Wiki and Gallery

    Hi Team,
    Need help with Blog, Wiki and Gallery startup. I have newly started visiting forums and quite interested to contribute towards these areas also.
    Please help.
    Thanks,
    Santosh Singh
    Santosh Singh

    Hello Santhosh,
    Blog is for Microsoft employees only. However, you can contribute towards WIKI and GALLERY using the below links.
    http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/
    http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/

  • Need help FLASH not launching and not uninstalling "licensing for this product has stopped working".

    Need help FLASH not launching and not uninstalling "licensing for this product has stopped working" and " you can only install one adobe product at a time please complete the other installation"  Flash was working absolutely fine before, I have no idea why this happened.

    I am having similar problem.  Can't open any of CS3 programs after trying to download Dreamweaver Trial, which wouldn't work because "couldn't remove DLM extention" error message.  So now I can not run Illustrator, Photoshop, or even Adobe Reader.  These are properly licensed for about a year. I get "License for product has stopped working".  Have 2 pending cases open with Adobe support (one for Dreamweaver trial, one for license problem) since 8/3 with NO ANSWERS - It says answers within 1-3 business days.  Was on phone support hold today for over 3 hours before line went dead with no help.  What is up with adobe support?  Can anyone help?

  • Need Help! I Uninstalled and reinstalled and still can't run ITUNES-missing file

    I need HELP! I uploaded the latest version of Itunes and had trouble. I followed the directions and removed all the dll files to the desktop. I un-installed and tried re-installing Itunes and it still won't work. There are no previous versions found on my computer. HELP!!! I need my ITUNES BACK!

    MSVCR80.dll is the error message I recieved. I followed the directions and removed all dll files from the folder and to the desktop as instructed.
    Many thanks. Doublechecking: did you also work through the following user tip?
    Troubleshooting issues with iTunes for Windows updates

  • HELP! Fuzzy images and text in Muse

    Hi
    I am going to preface this post by admitting that I am a complete amateur, just trying to create a simple but work-able and professional looking website for my business.
    I am new to Muse (previously used a similar program to create my sites) and have found navigating around the program quite easy. BUT my whole site looks fuzzy.. In 'design' mode and also when previewed (both in Muse and in browser).
    I would really appreciate any help that you could give me. If there is a way to upload it to a temporary site for you to give me advice? Or if I can send the .muse file to someone to check for me?
    Thank you very much in advance, I really appreciate it
    Lauren
    Here is a screen shot of the home master when previewed in Muse - you can see the logo, menu, background and text are all fuzzy...

    Please click "Publish" enter a name for your site and click "OK". This will create a free temporary website on Adobe Business Catalyst. You can then post the URL for that site here for the community to look at.
    A couple questions:
    1) I expect you're on a Retina Mac?
    2) Text appears to be images or System fonts? Whenever possible you want to use a Web Font. If none of the Web Font choices fit your need, then check the "Web Safe" fonts. If you still come up dry, then use a System font as a last resort. When using a system font Muse will convert it to an image. This will result in slower page load times in the browser and (in some cases) lower quality rendering of the type. Whenever possible, if you use a System font, you'll want to set the fill on the text frame to be opaque (a solid fill color, 100% opaque gradient or 100% opaque image that fills the complete text frame). If the text frame contains any transparent areas, then the image version of it will have lower quality anti-aliasing, edges, on the type.

  • I need help understanding export options and optimizing for web

    I have been using FCP X for a short while now and have a pretty good grasp on the editing capabilities. What I'm having a horrible time figuring out is the export/share options. The videos I create are typically approximately 1 minute in length and get posted to a web site (we have our own CMS and video player so I'm not using YouTube or Vimeo or anything like that). In order to post them I need them to be MP4s and then I have to create .webm and .ogv files. The source material I work with is generally great, high quality stuff, so I end up with very large output files from the initial FCP share master file options.
    When I use MPEG Streamclip to make my MP4s I end up with files that are still quite large and I can't seem to ever get the file size manageable without losing tons of quality. I do not have Compressor, though if that will solve my problem I will put in for the expense of it. What I'm trying to understand is what sorts of settings I should be trying out to get my file sizes to be manageable without completely compromising my quality. And I know this can be done, because the company I work for pays for a great quantity of video work each year (from an outside production firm) and the clips provided are beautiful in quality and small in file size -- for example, I recently worked on a video and got it into the 40MB range before quality went to crap, working off the same material the production company we do work with had theirs down into the teens and looking beautiful!
    To throw an even greater wrench in the works, I am working off a mac. But when my boss, on a pc, saves the mp4s I create (raw files -- not what is posted to the web) locally on his machine and views them from there the sound is always off a tad and the people in the videos look like they're lip synching.
    Any advice on either of these is MUCH appreciated. I've been trying to figure this out properly for months, and only today decided to stop seeing if someone else had the same question and just post my own.
    Bronwyn

    Thank you Karsten, this was helpful I have utilized the Quality slider and the frame size options before though with limited results. I've never messed with the Limit Date Rate option as I don't know what I'm doing with it, I see you put 5Mbps. Is that a typical setting that I could use?
    Using stream info, here's info on my original source file:
    Stream: Charles_0023_2.mov
    Duration: 0:00:51
    Data Size: 96.51 MB
    Bit Rate: 15.77 Mbps
    Video Tracks:
    H.264, 1920 × 1080, 29.97 fps, 15.64 Mbps
    Audio Tracks:
    MPEG-4 Audio stereo, 48 kHz, 127 kbps
    Stream Files:
    Charles_0023_2.mov (96.51 MB)
    As a comparison, here's the info on a similar clip that the company we sometimes use created:
    Stream: Charles_0019_4.mp4
    Duration: 0:00:49
    Data Size: 4.66 MB
    Bit Rate: 0.80 Mbps
    Video Tracks:
    JVT/AVC Coding, 710 × 400, 29.97 fps, 635 kbps
    Audio Tracks:
    MPEG-4 Audio stereo, 48 kHz, 162 kbps
    Stream Files:
    Charles_0019_4.mp4 (4.66 MB)
    I'm fine with bringing the frame size down some and modifying the limit data rate, but sometimes I feel like I'm forcing my video into something it's not and the quality suffers -- this is where my understanding of video work breaks down LOL. Any suggestions of how I can get my .mov into something like the the .mp4 above?
    Also have you had any experience with mp4s not playing back properly on pcs?
    Again, thank you!
    Bronwyn

  • Poor quality still frames

    Does anyone know why still frames are such poor quality?
    I'm constructing a movie using stills, and if a Ken Burns effect is used, the picture changing to the next photo as soon as the effect finishes can be a little jarring on the eye.
    To counteract this, I've been adding a still frame of 1-2 seconds either side of the main Ken Burns adjusted photo to act as a 'cushion' (like you can in Photo to Movie). You can see the difference in quaity in iMovie, so it does of course remain when you have exported to Quicktime.
    Is there a better method of doing this than still frames? I notice that the overlap transition helps by hanging on to the end of the previous frame, but it's not ideal.
    Any suggestions?
    Quicksilver G4   Mac OS X (10.4.6)   Programmes in regular use are Freehand, Photoshop, Freeway, Keynote, iMovie, iDV

    Karl, I swear you live inside everyone's browser, with a manual the like of which the rest of us have never seen!
    As usual, among the quickest to answer on these forums, and absolutely correct.
    It worked like a dream - another major headache removed. Many thanks indeed.

  • Poor quality DVD and img

    Both the burnt DVD and the.img copy have very poor quality when played. It is particularly noticeable on the text which acts as a link to the other parts of the DVD. The preview is fine and the encoder is set to "best quality" ..HELP!

    I'm looking for answers too: Having the best possible dv-quality raw material, I am puzzled that iDVD chooses to only use 1.2 GB of the 4.3 GB available on the DVD - even though I use the "Quality"-mode instead of best performance!
    The loss of quality really is visible - also on tv!
    /Jan
    PB12 1.33 GHz   Mac OS X (10.4.4)   Modified HD Hitachi 7200 rpm 60 GB

  • Need Help with complex query and computing values

    I have an issue trying to combine data from several tables. I need help trying to compute the "Total Hours", "Max Pressure" ,"Average Pressure" while displaying the "Manufacturer",
    "Part Type" , "Serial Number", "District", "Status","Truck Type",and "truck number" for a certain Part on all Trucks. I need to be able check and see if the serial number was on
    a particular job and calculate the hours of that serial number if it was on that job and the jobdate falls between the install date and removal date. Ive tried but keep getting either
    repeating rows, total hrs of the truck instead of the serial number. Ive considered doing a pivot to display it but have been having trouble putting it together.
    table 1
    (*records of parts*)
     Contains  serial number,truck number, part type, part number, install date, removal date, status
    table 2
    (*records of Jobs*)
    contains Jobnumber, JobStartdate, Max pressure, average pressure, and Totalhrs
    table 3
    (records related to jobs and trucks)
    contains jobnumber, district , and truck numbers
    Table 4
    (records of manufacturers and part numbers)
    contains partnumber, manufacturer name, and truck type
    I would like to get it to show like below
    SerialNo   PrtType       
    MFG      TruckNo  
     TrkType    TtlHrs 
       MaxPr   AvgPr 
      Status    
    Dst
    AB345     1200series  
    NGK        2G34        
    Boss X       400     10,000 
     9500  NonOp    
    NE
    Thanks in advance

    Hope this helps
    Note: (Date of Mar 1 2014 was just extended to a further date so the system would know that its still operating when calculating current hours)
    Table 1
    SerialNo    TruckNo  InstallDate RemovalDate      Status       PartNo      PartType
    BJ1002       F917   2013-09-17   2014-03-01   Oper         L871235       BJ 3000 GL
    CWS1002   F104   2012-11-21   2013-03-29   NonOper   L76088-450   CWS 2000
    CWS1003   F104   2013-04-24   2013-08-01   NonOper   L76088-450   CWS 2000
    CWS1005   F187   2012-11-21   2013-04-04   NonOper   L76088-450   CWS 2000
    CWS1006   F187   2013-04-24   2013-06-30   NonOper   L76088-450   CWS 2000
    CWS1007   F187   2013-06-30   2013-03-01   Oper         L76088-450   CWS 2000
    CWS1009   2F60   2013-05-05   2013-03-01   Oper         L76088-450   CWS 2000
    CWS1011   F809   2013-05-28   2013-08-28   NonOper   L76088-400   CWS 2000
    CWS1013   F990   2013-06-11   2013-10-29   NonOper   L76088-450   CWS 2000
    CWS1015   F783   2013-06-28   2013-03-01   Oper         L76088-450   CWS 2000
    Table 2
    JobNumber    Date                 District         PrAvTreat PrMaxTr TotalHrs
    553811287    2012-01-19    Fairmount    7337        8319     1.53
    652110088    2012-08-20    San Antonio  6340       7075      0.47
    652110090    2012-08-21    San Antonio  6134       7131      0.62
    652110091    2012-08-22    San Antonio  6180       2950      0.58
    652110092    2012-08-23    San Antonio  5959       6789      0.64
    652110093    2012-08-23    San Antonio  6165       7466      0.62
    Table 3
    TruckNo District    JobNumber
    1F01      Odessa   10011012329
    1F01      Odessa   10011012333
    1F01      Odessa   10011014831
    1F01      Odessa   10011014834
    1F01      Odessa   10011012332
    1F01      Odessa   10011012328
    1F01      Odessa   10011014829
    Table 4
    PartNumber    Manufacturer  TruckType
    L322020-2     Jimmy Dean   Ford T
    L322738-2     Lucas             Ford T
    L47869-1       Jimmy Dean   Ford T
    L76070-650   NGK               Ford T   
    Sam Howard

  • IPhone 5 screen wont turn on. (Need help or info, please and thank you.)

    So i got an Iphone 5, and i accedently droped it in the sink. i took it out, whipped it off,  i put it in my pocket and left it alone.
    the next day the screen was not working, moments later, it(Iphon5) turned off.  tried turnng it back on but it wouldnt work.
    so, again i left it. everything still works, its just that the screen wont turn on, i could still play music snapshot stuff,
    but my screen wont tun on.
    I NEED HELP.

    I don't beleive this is a known problem and you should probably bring your phone to a local Genius Bar (make an appointment here) as this is likely a hardware issue (a problem with your phone realizing that you removed it from your ear).
    If you're willing to tinker with it a bit, you can determine if this is a software issue by backing up your iPhone (separately ensure your photos, videos and music is backed up) and then "Restore" your phone. If the restoration solves the problem, you're dealing with a software issue. If the problem still exists, you're almost definitely dealing with a hardware issue.

  • NEED HELP about file handling and searching

    Hi guys !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    A) I need a help from u i wrote this programme to read from the file and assign the lines for the string array.
    import java.io.*;
    public class ReadFile{
    public static void main(String[] args){
    int i;
    BufferedReader file;
    String line() = null;
    String fileName = "xx.txt";
              try {
                   file = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(fileName));
    for(i=1;i<=10;i++){
    line(i)= file.readLine();
    System.out.println(line(i));
    file.close();
              } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
                   System.out.println("File: " + fileName + " not found.");
              } catch(IOException e) {
                   System.out.println("Error reading data from file: " + fileName);
    the thing is it is compiling but when interpritting it gives the error
    Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException in line(i)= file.readLine();
    plese help me on this and
    B) i want to know how to search the string array to find 4 letter words.
    i'm taking the each element which is line(i) one at a time and search it.
    Plese help me on these issues !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    You try to create an array with line(i) (as far as i see) but you dont need to keep each line in memory. As far as i understand you just need to process lines sequentially.. (Null pointer exception is thrown because you did not create your array properly!)
    Look at this code:
    http://www.java-tips.org/java-se-tips/java.io/reading-text-from-a-file.html
    You just need to define process method in that code. (and of course try to understand). So as far as i see, you will check for 4-letter words inside process method!
    For detecting 4-character word, you need to extract the words in the line using StringTokenizer:
    http://www.java-tips.org/java-se-tips/java.util/how-to-use-stringtokenizer.html
    Then you can just just use length() method of String class:
    http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/java/lang/String.html
    And if you need more advanced logic for processing the lines(currently seems to be the length of strings), you may try regular expressions:
    http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/essential/regex/index.html
    http://www.java-tips.org/java-se-tips/java.util.regex/

  • Help, lost all photos and texts while syncing new iphone

    While syncing my husbands new iphone 3 on itunes I gained all the music but lost all photos and texts... also all the apps and contacts from my iphone were added to his phone. Need help mostly on how to recover the photos that were deleted, there were about 1,000 of them and I didn't realize it was happening until it was too late....

    Where did the photos come from in the first place?
    You computer?
    His computer?

Maybe you are looking for