Still image quality loss b/t viewer and canvas?

When I import a still (I've tried jpg, tiff, etc), the image quality is perfect in the viewer, but as soon as I lay it down on the timeline it is blurred and foggy. What am I doing wrong? Please, any advice would be helpful, as this is for a job and I can't hand this in as is...

I'm sorry, I just realized someone else posted a similar quesiton. I jumped the gun.

Similar Messages

Still image quality poor, Help

I posted a similar question last night. This one is more of the same.
Issue: Poor image quality (flickering, Jumping) when viewing stills on my TV only...
I have made 2 test videos. One was made in FCE and one in iMovie8. Both are identical and consist of only 5 still pictures. I added motion to a couple of pics in each test. The video from iMovie looks great on my TV. The video fro FCE looks very poor. The image is jumpy and flickering.
Why does the same movie movie look different depending on the source? What is different? Do I have something set up incorrectly in FCE?
I tried applying the De-interlacing filter and the Flicker filter. I tried all variants of the De-interlace filter, ie odd/even. I have made several exports from FCE trying to get rid of the flicker/jumpy-ness to no avail.....Even the still pics that have no movement flicker a bit from FCE, for example, one of the pictures are of my son holding a dark green fishing rod while standing in a tent. The picture has no movement but the fishing rod and tent poles are flickering, almost like there are lights in them blinking on and off. A similar picture that has movement shows the fishing rod as alternating dark and light lines instead of just a dark green rod. The same pics from the iMovie clip look great. The color is correct and no flickering at all.
To export from FCE I am using Quick Time Movie. From iMovie 8, I am using 'Export Movie' high quality. On each video I then just dropped them into iDVD and viewed on my TV.
I am a new user to FCE and so far I like it much better than iMovie 6 or 8. I have a hard time believing that the still picture quality output form FCE is worse than iMovie. So I must be doing something wrong.
Thank you in advanced for help,
Toshiro

Well I can only assume that there is a difference in the way the data is handled between the 2 apps. I have resolved my issue by not compressing the data while exporting. Unfortunately, my 3 minute video is 7G !!...oh well
...now if I could just get rid of the thin green line at the bottom of the screen during my opening segment it would be great....
Thanks for taking the time to assist
Toshiro

How do i get a still image to fade the same way and at the same time as a video?

I have a video stacked on top of a still image. When i add a transition, the still turns to a black screen while the video fades in accordance to the transition. How do i get the still image to fade the same way and at the same time as the video?

I do. I've applied it to both the still image and the video. Say i used the lens flare transition. If i apply it to both the video and the still image, the video will dissolve in to the next frame, but the still image will go to a black screen and then jump to the next frame. Its almost as if i inserted a black frame instead of a transition, but only for 2 seconds. Below is kind of a peek what it looks like.

16:9 viewer and canvas

Ok, this is a simple thing, yet it is bothering me. Every time I see a picture of someone using FCE, the viewer and canvas are widescreen. I can't seem to get my canvas and viewer to be widescreen. I can work with widescreen just fine, but I have grey bars above and below the image. My viewer and canvas are in 4:3 ratio. Can anyone explain how to get the viewer and canvas into a 16:9 ratio?
Thanks
Alex

I am assuming that you are working with standard definition DV but have the camera set to the 16:9 setting? If so, you need to change the Easy Setup setting to DV-NTSC Anamorphic. After changing that setting create a new Project, or from the current project, just create a new Sequence (since the existing default first Sequence will still be using the DV-NTSC setting). Once you open the new Sequence, click Window, Arrange and choose one of the existing settings (Standard, Compositing, or Small Windows). The Viewer and Canvas window should automatically switch to the widescreen 16:9 format with no grey bars. The Browser and Timeline windows will also resize to match the changes in the Viewer and Canvas.

FCE 4: Picture in Viewer and Canvas is too small

I'm still learning but the picture in my Viewer and Canvas don't show very well. They show up with 2 grey bars on the left and right of the picture. Above the picture it shows 71% instead of 100%. When I put to 100% the picture will be zoomed very big. I have no idea where's the problem but there must be something very wrong. Before i had crosslines in the viewer but this problem is solved. But how do i get the picture back to fullsize in the Viewer and Canvas?

Tom's right, if there isn't enough room for FCE to display the image full size in the window it scales it to fit. Make the windows larger, (for example put it on compositing view under window arrangement), and then choose scale to fit for each of the images.

Color profile for Viewer and Canvas?

I've noticed that the color of the video in the FCPro 4.5 Viewer and Canvas looks absolutely nothing like the color when I output to DVD or QuickTime movie. (The video in FCPro seems to be much darker.) Is there a way to make the Viewer and Canvas look more analagous to what I'm going to get on final output?
Thanks.

Nope. Computer monitors colors have such a wide range that they are very unreliable. This is why it is best to hook up a TV, or better yet a properly calibrated NTSC Monitor (the latter only if you are producing professional video).
#8 External Monitor Viewing.
Shane's Stock Answer #8:
A simple path is mac > firewire > camera or deck > rca cables > tv
Then start up your camera and tv, then open fcp.
Then go View > External video > all frames
Video playback should be Apple firewire NTSC (If you are using an NTSC set)
Audio playback should be Audio follows Video
Techinially, this should send synched video to your TV
If for some reason you can't view your timeline on your external monitor, there are a few things to try:
1) Make sure that the camera/deck is connected and powered on BEFORE you open FCP.
2) In the Final Cut Pro menu select AUDIO/VIDEO Preferences and make sure your signal is being sent out thru Firewire DV.
3) Go to the menu and select VIEW>EXTERNAL>ALL FRAMES.
4) Click in the % box above the image and select FIT TO WINDOW.
5) Go to VIEW->refresh A/V devices
6) Make sure the Log & Capture window is closed
If you want it to play in both the canvas and the external monitor you need to go to the FINAL CUT PRO menu and select AUDIO/VIDIO settings and make sure MIRROR ON DESKTOP is selected under the PLAYBACK OUTPUT section
For all the stock answers, click on this link:
Shane Ross, "Stock Answers", 03:58pm Jan 13, 2005 CDT

FCP 7, viewer and canvas window is dark in lion

How to fix this problem???

The image in the Viewer and Canvas windows are 1 to 2 apperture too dark. When I convert a timeline to .mov file into Compressor or Quicktime converter, has the picture (movie) the right exposure ...
hope my English is understandable...

Cant see any video only white screens in Viewer and Canvas

I dont know if anyone has encountered this figured out how to resolve it yet. In FCP 7 on Snow Leopard when i drag a clip into viewer or try to edit in the Canvas all i see is a white screen. The title safe lines and wireframe show up when i turn these on and off, but no video. I occasionally get a solarized image in the Canvas. the time code progresses, but nothing in either window.
Thanks for any insights.

Thanks for all the suggestions, including links back to earlier discussions. This did shed some light, (and kicked me to be more explicit), when reviewing an earlier question on the same issue, but stating that this happened on an external Dell 2408 monitor...which is what I am using to edit. When i open the MBP and remove the video miniport cable and try to play on the laptop display, all is well, I can see video in both Viewer and Canvas. When i plug the monitor back in and drag these windows over to the monitor (cant move the FCP application wholesale) they also play fine. When i close the MBP, wait and refire it up with mouse or keyboard...I see video in both, but when i play either one the image jumps back and forth, cycling from one frame and back...while the time code advances and the audio track does too.

Green screen in both viewer and canvas

Came in this morning, tried to log and capture some material from my dsr-11. Got i/o error. Quit, restarted and the viewer and canvas screens were green. Quit and tried starting FCP without a project open. Same thing. Tried restoring old preferences. same thing. Tried restarting from cloned drive, same problem which seems to indicate a hardware problem, ran hardware tests in techtool pro without any success. Any ideas?

Update. I bought a new firewire 800 card (a LaCie, the same as the old one) but haven't installed it yet. I figured, let's see what happens if you reconnect a drive to the old firewire 800 card. Same thing; both the viewer and canvas screens are green. I quit, disconnect the drive from the firewire 800 card, restore preferences using fcprescue, same thing. I do a restart, same thing. Then I do what I did yesterday, shut down, disconnected the g5 from power for 5 minutes, reconnected, restarted, everything's working again.
So a good reminder: if things are working properly and you've tried a bunch of remedial steps, Shut down and disconnect power from your computer for a couple of minutes. Never made much sense to me, but it sometimes will help.
I'll replace the firewire 800 card in a while and post back what happens.

White Viewer and Canvas screens in FC Studio & Not an Idiot

iMac
2.66 GHz Core Duo
2GB RAM
OS X 10.5.8
FCS 3
The viewer and canvas have apparently decided to flip to white and remain there. But first, they decided they'd rather display a strange, posterized/solarized version of whatever clip was loaded at the time.
Viewer prefs set properly to RGB
Background set to black.
Changing display prefs from millions to thousands then back again - fail.
Clean reinstall of FC Studio - fail.
QT test clip - 720x480, DV/DVCPRO - NTSC
Any ideas?

Viewer prefs set properly to RGB<</div>
Okay, you know that one. Good.
Background set to black. <</div>
Completely irrelevant. Not good.
Changing display prefs from millions to thousands then back again - fail. <</div>
Right, but a restart of FCP or the Mac might also be part of that debug just to rule out all possibilities.
Clean reinstall of FC Studio - fail. <</div>
Of course. Reinstalling Apple software is the LAST thing we'd suggest. Well, it's the last thing I would suggest. It is almost always a complete waste of time for a long list of reasons but mainly for only one: unlike Windows apps, Apple software just doesn't work that way.
QT test clip - 720x480, DV/DVCPRO - NTSC <</div>
Okie dokie. When you play this clip in QT what happens?
when you launch Motion and attempt to run a previously saved comp what happens?
Any ideas? < </div>
Debugging your particular issue is not going to be easy. Trying to figure out if it's FCP, QT, your graphics card, your monitor, or some other weird and obscure setting is a question, largely, of having a good feel for your system's behaviors and application inventory and history.
Stick with it, we're going to be asking you some really idiotic questions and asking you to perform some really lame tests.
bogiesan

Still image quality

i have a lot of photos i want to put in the timeline and fade in and out for a presentation. the images are 720 x 480 and 150 dpi Tiffs. in the preview window they look perfect. When i drag them into the canvas window the quality gets worse, they don't look as sharp as they do in preview. Is there a reason for this or a setting i am missing somewhere that relates to the still's quality?

Let's clear this up... at 100% you don't have any scaling artifact because you're not changing the size of the picture.. (so it should, in theory, look better) but you STILL ONLY SEE a progressive scan of video. The only way to see both fields properly is to view externally to a video monitor, or use something like the Matrox MXO with a Cinema Display.
If you could see both fields on your computer display interlaced, when you stop on a frame with some motion in it, you'd see the dreaded jitter between fields. Instead, you only see a progressive scan of both fields. In all the years I've editing on NLE's I've never seen both fields in the Canvas or viewer or source/record monitor (avid)... like a person would see it on a TV set. The reason is because most video over the years is and was interlaced, and all computer displays are progressive... so they don't play well together. Plus computing power is given over to things other than showing you both fields interlaced as they would be seen on a video monitor (still not good enough).
Jerry

Image Quality Loss in Captivate 7

I'm creating a webinar in Captivate 7. The project dimensions are 540x420. When I insert an image and resize it to fit the template there is a great deal of quality loss. For example, when I inserted the chart below and resized it, the chart's gridlines disappear and the text becomes very fuzzy.
If I zoom in (Ctrl +) the quality returns, as shown below.
Can I be certain when the project is published that the quality of any images I insert will return to normal? Or is there a "view high resolution" option like in Adobe InDesign that I can turn on?

No you cannot. The only way to be certain that an image will not suffer any additional quality loss is to publish the image at exactly 100% of its original dimensions. Any resizing will always result in degradation to some extent.

Still images exported to DVD look deinterlaced and flicker on TV monitor

Hi,
I have tried tried almost everything and I still have issues with the still images exported to DVD as sequencefrom FCP 7.0 by using Compressor are deinterlaced and flicker on TV monitor. Please help remove the annoying flicker.
My FCP Timeline Sequence settings match the image resolution:
Frame Size: 1024 x 682 (double of 720 x 480 standard DVD res)
Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square
Field Dominance: None
Compressor: Photo JPG (also tried, DVCPRO-NTSC)
I cropped the original images in Photoshop to the 1024 x 682 and saved as tiffs. They still look deinterlaced in FCP timeline and exported to DVD on my iMac computer monitor.
Final output of DVD will be on this monitor:
Specifications:
Ikegami
Model: VCM-2101
Resolution: 450 TV Lines (Horizontal)
Should I crop the images to 450 horizontal pixels or the double of that 900?
How can I match the sequence or the images settings to avoid the flicker and deinterlaced look on that monitor? I am not able to test the image by having the monitor next to computer.
Compressor:
I used custom DVD settings in Compressor for 90 min best quality DVD. Tried the Porgressive and "Same as Source" in Output field.
In "Crop to" and "Padding" I set for preserve source aspect ratio and letterbox area of source.
I followed the advices from below and I still did not resolve the problem. Please is there anythign else I can try?
Thanks a lot..
Re: Poor Quality Stills
Dec 19, 2006 4:08 PM (in response to Steve Braker)
Things to try (In increasing order of image degradation)
- (in FCP) field order>none
- (in FCP or Photoshop) reduce whites by 10% - reduces overly bright areas
- (in FCP) flicker filter - minimum
- (in Photoshop) motion blur>vertical> .2 - .5 pixels - blurs vertically only
- (In FCP or Photoshop) Gaussian blur> .2 - .5 pixels -blurs both horizontally as well as vertically
- (in FCP or Photoshop) deinterlace - throws away half the image and is generally not appropriate on scanned images

Dear Russ,
Thank you very much. Yes, there is something else in the sequence, old documentary, 768 x 570 (no field dominance, 25fps, Apple ProRes 422) but the images are more imporant.
make a progressive sequence with square pixels. (I am partial to 720P, 1080 should work – or 540). Choose Pro Res 422
Do you mean that I should make a sequence in FCP with these settings? If yes, how can I set a "progressive" sequence? I dont see a setting for output field in FCP sequence settings, lnly in customizing Compressor output DVD format.
Also: "720P, 1080 should work – or 540" are you talking about Frame size? If so, to set in Compressor or in FCP?
If you have interlaced material, then de-interlace before you bring it in. If you don't have interlaced clips, don't de-interlace.
The images are not interlaced after I crop them, apply motion blur filter in Photoshop but look interlaced in FCP timeline after I import them and even to the same as photos sequence in FCP timeline.
Please help and thank you for your comments.

Getting poor still image quality in SD project on CS4

hey guys. sorry if you heard this one, but i havent seen anything addressing this.
i am using CS4 to edit a Standard def project and i am running into a problem with still images being choppy and distorted.
I tried all options to produce a better quality, but i get poor quality in the timeline monitor even after i render preview. the ouput
when i export is equally bad.
what i did find out was that if i switched projects in favor of an HD 720 the images are crisp on import and look good.
am i missing something. i assumed the images looked bad because they werent rendered and since i didnt need to render to edit i didnt want to lose the time, so now i'm stuck with those images, or i have to scrap the project and start again in hd and i prefer not to. i would have done it in hd, but the footage i was given was SD. anyways i would appreciate some help. thanks!
btw i've tried to export in both MS DV and WMV
i have tried importing psd png and jpg i have used all these in the past in pro2 with no problem

still images being choppy and distorted.
Can we see a sample?

Problem with still image quality 1920 x 1080 HD Export

Hey everyone ---
Question that I can't seem to find a clear answer for -- maybe you can help !
I am producing a film and am exporting it using the H264 setting, square pixels, CBR. Video quality is wonderful --- but I am having an issue with a still image. Essentially, I am importing an image of a film logo at the beginning of my film. The image is vector, dropped into photoshop from illustrator, saved as either an EPS or jpg, then I import that into the timeline. Once exported, video looks crisp and beautiful, but the logo at the beggining has slightly jagged edges and is NOT crystal sharp super clear as it should be or as it was saved as.
I've tried a few things but can't seem to get the formula right. I tried adjusting frame size, doesn't work. I tried bringing in a HUGE image and scaling it down, again, doesn't work. I've used many versions of premiere (since 6.0) and I don't remember ever having this sort of problem. I've tried all the frame sizes, from 1440 x 1080 to 1920 x 1080 (my source footage) and it just doesn't like to render the image crisply.
Any ideas?
Thanks !

Create a new .psd in Photoshop (using the Film and Video templates) that match your sequence settings. Bring the vector image into PS and add it on a second layer to that new .psd. Save out that .psd as a .png with no Interlacing.
Bring that into PP for use in the sequence.

Still image quality loss b/t viewer and canvas?

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