Poor quality of still images in final cut

i have been bringing in all types of files jpegs,tiffs,gifs,bmp,pngs and they all look grainy and digitized. anything know how to fix this?
thank you

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Animation. How do I import still images in final cut pro x (from dragon frame) duration 3 frames pr. image?

Animation. How do I import still images in final cut pro x (from dragon frame) duration 3 frames pr. image? We have allready tried to set stillimages duration in preferences to 0,08 sek, but it does not have any effect!

You can drag your images to the timeline, select all, ctrl-d and set the duration to 3 frames by typing 3 and enter.
Or you can use Quicktime 7 to "open image sequence", select the desired duration, export your animation to quicktime and import that into FCP X for further editing.

Exporting JPEG still images in Final cut 5

Just wondering if anyone can tell me how to export a still image from final cut?
I used to have final cut 3 and it was as simple as file/export/quicktime...
but now it only gives me options for a quicktime movie...
Thanks...
Jeremy.

Instead of "export to quicktime" choose "export using qt conversion".
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rh

Using still images with Final Cut (and the apple suite in general)

I have had a re-occuring and long term problem that has caused me many lost hours of head scratching and work arounds, and as of yet I have not been able to come up with a good solution.
Its to do with integrating still images with the Final Cut suite.
If I receive a high quality image from a client to use in their video and I then try importing it into Final Cut and animating it, it always ends up looking like a pile of ahem. Often I will get "swimming" lines appear across fine detail on the image, and parts of it will flicker as it moves across the screen. For instance, if I have a picture of some blinds or other fine detail (especially horizontal and vertical lines), when I add a grow and throw movement to it the detail will become very noisy - buzzing and flickering like mad.
I have found I can counter this by resizing the image in photoshop to a resolution closer to SD video (700w or 500h) - but I always end up losing detail, and the flickering and noise is only reduced, not eliminated. Other things that have helped are blur effects applied at a very low level, like 0.5 blur, so its not noticeable visually, but Final Cut seems to treat it differently and quieten the noise and flicker down.
However, all of these workarounds are ultimately still giving a reduced quality product.
Also, this problem is not necessarily constrained to Final Cut, I am currently fighting DVD Studio Pro because it is murdering the text quality in a stills slideshow I am creating - and in this situation there is no animation being applied. No matter what file type (psd, jpeg, tiff, png...) or size I output the text and images from Photoshop in, the moment DVD studio pro gets hold of it, it turns to cripe.
For a while I was putting it down to the fact that I usually edit in SD (PAL) formats, and there just wasn't the resolution available to reproduce fine detail. However, I do often see other people achieving pin-sharp fine detail on still images and text in SD formats (the Apple templates are a good example)
So, my question to you, oh great and high boffins, if you are dealing with still images and text, how do you do it? How do you work around any noise problems you have, and how do you produce those pin-sharp images (both moving and still) I see in other professional productions?
Quad G5 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

still images with too high a resolution will always cause problems. this is due to the detail of the image being finer than the scanline of the tv can display ... obviously this will caise the image to flicker as these details alternately appear and disappear as and when the scanline can display them. as you have discovered, the answer is to apply a very small blur, the effect being that the detail is spread by the blur such that the scanline can dislay it correctly.
text issues are often rooted in the same problem ... unless the text is placed very carefully (whole even number on the y axis) then the quality may be impaired due to the resulting interlacing/scanline issues

DVCPRO HD 720P: pixel aspect ratios with still images from Final Cut

I am currently trying to get still images from a trailer I am working on with Final cut pro. The footage is DVCPRO HD 720P 24pn and the interlacing and pixel aspect ratios have been giving me a lot of trouble in photoshop. I am able to convert the PAR but it is for preview purposes only...? I need the file to be saved with the converted PAR. How do you do that???
Also, the de-interlacing filter on photoshop doesn't seem to help the quality of the photo.
Anyone have any ideas?
I have searched and searched and only found somewhat related questions, so maybe I am the only one trying to do this...

Why are you doing interlace if you have 720p?

Projecting still images using final cut express

Maybe someone can answer this tricky question. We need to project a FCE movie that has photoshop still images imported into it, but these photoshop images (which appear normal on the computer screen), are distorted in the projection. They look squashed horizontally. In fact the still image that we made with photoshop and imported into final cut needs to be projected on a wall to match a four foot tall section of the wall, so we need get the size exact. That is the reason why we cannot have any distortion.
We have read that still images imported into final cut should be 720 by 480 pixels to avoid distortion, but that produces an even more squashed image, and this in pixels, that determined the size of the image, so how would we determined the size without affecting the pixels? The distance between the projector and the wall is already fixed and we cannot move it. Does anyone know how to maintain the original proportions of a still image imported into FCE for projection? Thank so much.

Hi, thanks you for your quick answer. We used photoshop elements 4.0 (for Mac) and Final Cut Express HD 3.5.1 (Mac). The still image that we bring into FE is a mask, it has a transparency so I guessed is layered. When we bring it into FE appears as sequence so we open it into a timeline and bring it back to the browser so it can be used as a still image. The movie is projected as DVD on the wall.

Flipping a still image in Final Cut

Sorry I think this is easy but it escapes me at the moment. I just want to flip a layer.

Use Video Filters> Perspective> Flop
You can flip the video frame vertically, horizontally or both.
Piero

Losing picture quality when doing slideshows with Final Cut Pro

Whenever I put images in final cut and export them, the quality of the images look utter garbage. The pictures im taking are 2848X4288. Whatever Frame Size I make and whenver i Export them, the images doesnt look as sharp.
Could anyone suggest that I do something so I can keep the same quality of pictures?
thanks!

I'd size them down in Photoshop, to match your sequence settings aspect ratio, or a bit larger if you want to zoom in/out or pan/scan.
You can adjust them to 72dpi for use in SD video...not sure about HD.
K

Render Quality of still images for Blu Ray?

Hello,
can anyone help me on how to control the quality of still images beeing rendered within Encore?
Transcoding is for film only and on my full HD Blu Ray it seems, that still images or diashows are
rendered in SD quality at best.
Any hints appreciated!
Cheers,
Guenter

Hello and thanks for the quick replies and especially the welcome greetings.....
The images do match the resolution of the videos, they are all 1920x1080.
I created the images with Photoshop and next to JPG I also tried the PSD,
but it made to difference.
They are not part of the videos, they are just pictures I've included using
the diashow function within Encore. There is no transcode menu available
for single images nor the diashow.
The default transcode settings - which are used for video only afaik - are
also full hd, full quality.
Any other ideas?
Cheers,
Guenter

Quality of still images imported from i-Photo

I've recently got a new Mac, with updated version of i-Movie. Struggling to come to terms with it, but one major problem is quality of still images.
Whatever I do, they look rubbish in i-Movie. I've tried all sorts of settings, Ken Burns etc, still nowhere near the crystal images on the previous version of i-Movie.
I've read that we're not supposed to look at quality in i-Movie, but only on burning, but this is a nuisance, and anyhow when I made a Quicktime movie it was no better.
Can anyone help? And why, when something is supposed to be better, is it actually worse?
Thanks.
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Adam
You might try more closely matching the screen resolution of iMovie, which unless you are going widescreen is 720x540... There is not much sense in putting in more dpi than the video format can handle. You can get some distortion when it compresses the images.
I do find that they never look as good in iMovie on my TV as they did on the computer however. Ken Burns or whatever we try.
Also, iMovie will stretch smaller than 720x540 images to fit the dimension of the screen, which makes those look truly awful. We usually put those on a black background (in Photoshop) so that they stay at the smaller size.
Terri

Image quality using iMovie 08 vs Final Cut Pro

I read in November's Macworld that if I use a tapeless camcorder, "you won't get the best image quality if you use iMovie '08 because the software converts each movie clip to smaller, more manageable size. To get the highest quality you'll need to be running Final Cut Pro on a Mac Pro with at least 2GB of RAM." Do you all agree with this? And if so, please consider the following. I used a mini DV camcorder to transfer all my tapes to my computer and to an external hard drive. Have I already lost that image quality in doing so using iMovie? If so, can Final Cut Pro import from iMovie and improve that quality by decompressing or will I need to retransfer the tapes using Final Cut Pro or will the difference be too negligible to be noticed and not to bother. Thanks, SWestD

I read in November's Macworld that if I use a tapeless camcorder, "you won't get the best image quality if you use iMovie '08 because the software converts each movie clip to smaller, more manageable size. To get the highest quality you'll need to be running Final Cut Pro on a Mac Pro with at least 2GB of RAM." Do you all agree with this?
It depends on the format. In general, the consumer tapeless cameras shoot some highly compressed variant of the mpeg2 or mpeg4 format (delivery formats). These formats are not designed to be edited but rather to be displayed directly from the camera to the TV. In order to edit the material, you must first convert the files from their delivery format to something editiable. This conversion usually results in LARGER not smaller files. There is the potential for some minimal alteration of the image in the transcoding process. This is the trade-off for shooting with such a compressed format.
And if so, please consider the following. I used a mini DV camcorder to transfer all my tapes to my computer and to an external hard drive. Have I already lost that image quality in doing so using iMovie?
No, capturing DV material from tapes using iMovie is a direct digital transfer. DV/NTSC or DV/PAL video as captured from tape is the muxed (mixed audio and video) DV stream. It is an exact replica of what is on the tape.
If so, can Final Cut Pro import from iMovie and improve that quality by decompressing or will I need to retransfer the tapes using Final Cut Pro or will the difference be too negligible to be noticed and not to bother.
FCE and FCP capture material from tapes slightly differently than iMovie. While iMovie brings the material from the tape unaltered, FCE/FCP uses Quicktime during capture to pull the audio and video into separate streams with in the resulting file. By having the audio demuxed, the programs are able to edit multiple video streams simultaneously while iMovie is limited on one at a time. The video quality is not altered in this demuxing process.
If you choose to shoot with a tapeless camera and edit the material in FCE or FCP, FCP has a wider range of formats that can be handled by the program, but in no way will it deal with them all. Many still need to be converted into an edit friendly format before you bring them into the program.
x

Poor rendering quality for still images

I have opened a new project with PAL DSLR settings (1080p, 25fps).
I have added a full res (about 4000px x 3000px) still image to the timeline and added a pan effect to it. When I view the preview in PE it looks fine. However, when I render the clip the quality is very poor in the preview.
I have tried exporting the clip to a file and this plays fine, but the preview does not look good.
Any ideas why the rendering should have this effect?

pickera2
I have a few things for you to consider and tryout if interested.
First, you are taking a 4000 x 3000 4:3 still into a 1920 x 1080 16:9 project (you say project preset = PAL/DSLR/1080p/DSLR 1080p25).
Your problem is confined to the preview of the pan and zoom result using the Pan and Zoom Tool (I am assuming the you are using Premiere Elements 10 or 11 or 12...I do not recall that you said which one).
Edit Menu/Preferences/General includes the preference "Default Scale to Frame Size" and it does just that. It is typically found ON. So, when your 4000 x 3000 pixels still is imported, the program tries to fit it as best possible into the 1920 x 1080 16:9 space set up in the Edit Mode monitor (Magnification = Fit) by the project preset. In your case, you would expect to see the following with black borders:
Is that what you are taking into the Pan and Zoom workspace? Or are you scaling what is seen there so that the image just fills the 1920 x 1080 space? Does it look like the following after scaling, if you do scale to fit?
And important point to remember is that whatever the case, the Pan and Zoom workspace is not referencing what is seen on the Timeline, but is instead referencing back to the original at the hard drive save location.
An alternative to all of this includes
Bringing you image into the project with the Default Scale to Frame Size disabled in preference. Then the 4000 x 3000 will overflow the space in the 1920 x 1080 monitor. You would then ignore what you see in the Premiere Elements workspace, select the Pan and Zoom Tool to open the Pan and Zoom workspace, and do your pans and zooms on the image that you see there. Click Done when finished. Back in the Premiere Elements workspace render the Timeline and scale what you see in the Edit Mode monitor as needed.
You also might want to look at beforehand cropping your 4000 x 3000 4:3 to 2200 x 1238 pixels 16:9 and using that as your source media with or without the Default Scale to Frame Size enabled.
Please view to see if the previews look any better and/or there are improvements in the export.
Thanks.
ATR

Rendering imported images in Final Cut so they look nice

I recently edited a video requiring still image animation, something Final Cut is notoriously poor at. After much experimenting, I got good results that I want to share. Hope it will help someone else. I have also posted this info, with pictures, here: http://members.dslextreme.com/users/craig.lawson/fce/static_images.html
Q: Say you have a nice graphic done in Illustrator or Inkscape. How can you import it into FCE?
A: Not supported. As I write this, I've found no filters which allow SVG to be imported. However, you can convert your graphic to JPEG or PNG, and import that. PNG supports transparency, and is recommended.
Q: I've imported a nice high-resolution PNG and it looks crappy when I try to zoom or distort it. It's 4 times the resolution of my video. +What did I do wrong?+
A: Not supported. What you did wrong is to assume that FCE would use the extra resolution you provided and render a nice image.
Q: Is there nothing I can do?
A: Over in the high-rent neighborhood, people with FCP are using Adobe After-Effects for this. But those of us on a budget bought FCE for a reason. Fortunately, the FCE 4 bundle comes with a tool which gets you partway there: LiveType.
LiveType to the rescue. I hate LiveType. I want to like it, since I like good typography, but LiveType has a weird interface for controlling effect rates, does not support multiple columns credit rolls (hello? Is that basic or what?), and appears to be focused on cheap tricks.
Yet it can import high resolution images, keep the high resolution until rendering, and works well with FCE. I'll describe my storyboard, and how I used LiveType to make it look pretty good. (You can use my sequence if you want, but I'm not writing a cookbook here. My goal is to use my storyboard to describe a general technique.)
Storyboard
My images are two static vector graphics created in Inkscape.
* Start with image one, scale = 100% @ 0 sec, and begin gradual scale increase (zoom in) to scale = 720% @ 17 sec.
* At 10 seconds, begin a 2 second transition from image one to image two.
* While this is going on, begin distorting the image with the vertical Wave filter. Start with amplitude = 0 and frequency = 0 @ 0 sec. Gradual change to amplitude = 10 @ 10 sec and frequency = 20 @ 15 sec.
* Start Bad TV filter at 15 seconds.
* Begin one second fade-out @ 17 sec.
Implementation
If done entirely in FCE, the result is a pixelated mess with moire patterns. The rendered image section shown here is about 10 seconds into the sequence.
Start by exporting your images to PNG at 4 times the resolution of your video (multiply width and height each by 2). Import these into LiveType, size appropriately, and add the transition. (I'm not going to describe exactly how to do this in LiveType. There are many LiveType tutorials available on the Internet, and more words here will not improve LiveType's quirky interface.)
Implement the scale in LiveType, also, but do not scale fully from 100% to 720%. LiveType slows down a lot at high scale values, and we need some headroom to do post-effect scaling in FCE. Instead, scale from 100% to 300%.
Import the project into FCE. Add Wave and Bad TV filters. Notice how when the wave filter makes your image ripple, the top and bottom edges are cut-off? It appears as though FCE imported a rectangular image from LiveType, and there's nothing beyond the edges but black. To complete the effect, add scale from 100% @ 0 sec to 240% @ 17 sec (300% x 240% = 3.0 x 2.4 = 7.2 = 720%). Scale in FCE is applied after the other filters, and hides the cut-off edges.
End result: Much better looking than with FCE alone. Pixelation is eliminated and moire patterns are reduced (though not eliminated). However, it is a pain to set up. But that is the price perfectionists pay, so welcome to the club and suck it up.
*Removing moire & interlace flicker*
Moire & interlace flicker occurs when you use narrow horizontal lines in your graphic. Bad choice, yet here we are.
First off, what is the destination for your work - broadcast TV, DVD, or YouTube? If the first two, you should see how it looks on an interlace monitor; if YouTube, you're probably done - upload a test, see how your careful work has been mangled, weep, and then give up.
For interlace, you'll need to blur vertically to reduce adjacent scanlines flicker. The standard technique for this is to apply:
Video Filters > Blur > General Convolution:
Cell 2 = 0.25
Cell 5 = 0.5
Cell 8 = 0.25
all other cells = 0
Apply as the last filter in the chain. However, if you see moire due to the Wave or some other distortion filter, you might try adding another one at the beginning of the filter chain.
Moire occurs not just in still images, but also when the images animate. Although not shown here (because these are still images), I have not eliminated moire entirely. However, it is improved.
Tips to improve image quality further:
* Avoid scaling in FCE. If you can, scale in LiveType only.
* Avoid using thin lines.
* Use a high resolution source image.
Message was edited by: c555

"A: Over in the high-rent neighborhood, people with FCP are using Adobe After-Effects for this."
Nothing will scale bitmapped images 720% well. Not even After Effects. It may look better than FCE but it will look bad. AE and Motion will support vector images and continuously rasterize to create smooth scaling at high levels.
If you want vector text in FCE that will scale up you can use Title 3D.

How to maintain high image quality of still images

Hello,
I have been creating flipbooks out of still images shot on a canon MK II. They are 8 mp files and look great blown up large in photoshop, however, once imported into iMovie through iPhoto and played as a sequence in rapid succession they seem to lose quality. They appear slightly compressed or otherwise a little pixelated. A get info on an individual frame says it is is less than 200 KB when the original file is 3 mb. Is there a setting I am missing or other technique for maintaining the images' high quality after being brought into this rapid slideshow? Should I be using final cut to achieve this type of high quality?
thanks!

The following works well. Save your images in photoshop as TIFF files, with a resolution of 1920 x 1080, 72 pixels per. Save to the desktop. Drag into imovie. Make sure your imovie is hd 1080i. Use the Ken Burns to expand the picture to fill the black spaces, if you so desire.
At that point, you'll have a super high def show.
Hope this helps.

Video quality changes when imported into Final Cut Pro

I have video files that I have imported from an external hard drive that were transferred from an HD camera. When viewing the footage directly from the hard drive, the quality is great. Once imported into Final Cut Pro, however, there are small "flares" (don't know how else to describe them) that appear for split seconds across the screen. The best way to describe it is if you are watching a television that has an antenna, there will be static or interferance on the image. This is barely noticable but I can't determine what would cause the decline in quality. My video settings are set to DV NTSC 48 kHz and wonder if this is the problem or if anyone knows of something else that I should change prior to importing.

Thank you so much for your help! I am technically challenged and STRUGGLING to say the least.
Some files are definitely H.264 and I can convert them to ProRes. I also have clips that are
DVCPRO HD 1080p25, 1,440 x 1,080 (1,888 x 1,062)
Linear PCM, 16 bit big-endian signed integer, 2 channels, 48000 Hz
Current Size: 1,440 × 810 pixels
Will I need to do anything to those as well?
Here is the question I'm afraid to ask because I think I know the answer already. Can I simply replace the clips in my sequence with the newly compressed ProRes files or do I have to change all of the video and sequence settings and then start all over?

Poor quality of still images in final cut

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