Using still image in FCP and Motion

I'm using still images in Motion (and FCP) and exporting them to Quicktime movie files. What's the best size and resolution for the images and are JPGs or TIF best? I'm exporting for 720 X 480, and currently my JPGs are 4 x 6 at 300 dpi with a pixel width and height of 1312 x 2000. I'm adding some behaviors to the images in Motion (motion paths and shrink/grow).
My FCP project is setup as a DV NTSC 48kHz, 720 x 480, editing timebase=59.94, timecode Rate=same as editing timebase, compressor-DV/DVPRO-NTSC, quality 100%.
When I export to Quicktime the movies are very low quality--lots of noise and moire pattern etc.
How do I get the best qualtiy using still images? Is it my FPS setting, image pixel size, compressor setting? Also, do the movies need to be deinterlaced?
The preview in the FCP browser and canvas looks a little better but I do notice noise (moire patterns) along the sharp edges of the still images.
I've seen QT movies of these very same images (done by someone else who is no longer around) and they are much better quality.
Does anyone have an appropriate workflow for this type of project? The final movies are to be shown on a flatscreen monitor from a local computer, so the file sizes can be relatively large (300mb).
I can post an example of he movie files if that might help.
Thanks.
Pedro

David, your a genius!!! You posted your reply on my birthday, and I missed it until today!
Fotomagico is devastatingly easy to use and absolutely makes me want to cry at the amount of time I wasted creating photo slideshows in FCP!
I opened Fotomagico up and created a slideshow, one that I had already created in FCP and had take me FIVE HOURS to create... in TEN MINUTES!!!!!!!!! Aaaaaaaaah.
I couldn't believe it. I thought there had to be a catch or something. This was too easy the quality can't be there... but it was. It's amazing and I can't thank you enough for all the future hours you have saved for me.
Al Romero

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Hi all, I am hoping someone out there can help me.
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I figured most of it out myself.

2 imacs v 1mbp for use with FCP and motion.

I'm in need of advice. I'm in the market for a new computer(s).
Let me give you a rundown on my situation.
HOME COMPUTER- dual 800 1GIG ram G4. probably 6-7 years old -i got it 2nd hand in 03 i think-
(its about 6 years old and very noisy and update needed)
WORK COMPUTER- AL PB G4 1.5ghz 2gig ram 17". Bees knees when released almost 4 years ago.
(redering and Motion are getting beyond tiresome with how slow they are).
The WORK computer I do all my editing on while the HOME computer I use for internet surfing, itunes etc. I use FCP for editing wedding dvds, work related videos etc. but I'm thinking of taking a break from the wedding filming & editing business to concentrate on other things. I will still continue to edit and film but not as much in the past 6 years. As of last week I don't have any projects or side jobs in the pipeline but that may change within 6 months.
MY QUESTION- What should I get?
1. 1 x 2.6 Ghz 4gig Ram 17" MBP at around 3,500 dollars (i'm in japan so about 360,000yen) and then use my AL powerbook as my home computer
OR
2. 2 x imac 20inch with 4gig ram which i think comes in at just under the MBP price
OR
3. 1 x imac 24" 4gig ram & 1x imac 20" with 4gig ram.
Is final cut pro and motion3 going to work better on the imacs than on my current AL powerbook? surely!
I still use motion1 and that really pushes my computer to it's limits. and the last 2 years have been a hectic one editing wise so I didn't want to upgrade computers during the course of projects ongoing.
(playing with fire in my books)
THING IS i need to be able to edit at both work and home. I take a my laptop with me to work everyday, but if I were to get 2 desktops I could just use external hard drives for my projects (which I do anyway). That's why if both computers are desktops they both need to be able to handle motion 3 and fcp6 to a competent level. and if I got two desktops I could try and sell my AL PB. It's still in superb condition due to me keeping it sleeved whenever not in use.
I heard rumours that apple will be releasing new imacs sooner rather than later as well.
ANY thoughts would be highly appreciated.

From what I've read on this forum, FCP doesn't work properly with two video cards.
-DH

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

Still image that shimmies and shakes

There are 2 still images in this piece I'm finishing up that that shimmy and shake. They are only on the sreen for 3 seconds, but it's noticeable.
I thought I'd found the answer when I pulled them ouf of the Timeline, into the Viewer to have a look, and discovered that I must have neglected to Modify, Make Freezeframe.
So, I did this and put them back in the Timeline, but they still dance!
I again, pulled them to the Viewer just to make sure, and sure enough, they ARE freezeframes.
Why would they shake?
Thanks.
J.

The pulsing is the result of thin horizontal lines (or areas of high contrast) landing on one field but not the other. As the alternating fields are drawn by the monitor, you get a flickering/ pulsing effect.
The basic strategy is to:
1. tell the program to not use fields (in FCP set field dominance to NONE)
2. extend the horizontal elements vertically so they exist over more than one scanline. (In Photoshop - Use a slight vertical motion blur of 1-2 pixels)
3. Knock down areas of very high luminescence.
Alternately, you can use the gausian blur or flicker filter in FCP at the expense of softening the image.
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Using Still Photos in FCP

Hey everyone,
I'm working on a project in FCP, which is made up entirely of still images (jpgs) shot using my Canon 40D. I'm doing some panning and zooming (Ken Burns like), as well as some rapid stop motion animation sequences and compositing. I'm using a lot of photos!
I've been doing some tests and FCP is chugging hardcore, not to mention the brutal render times and everytime I move or copy something it has to prepare the display. I NEED to make this process run smoother!
I would like the final product to be HD and 16x9, but do you guys/gals think that I will need to go to SD because of the limitations of my computer (iMac intel core duo with 2gb of ram)?
In your opinion:
1. What sequence settings should I use to get the best FCP performance for this project? Would you recommend a particular editing time base?
2. Will resizing my photos make FCP work much quicker?
3. Are there any system settings in Final Cut that I should tinker with? Presently my Memory and Cache Settings are:
Memory Usage 100% 1818mb
Application 10% 167mb
Thumbnail Cache Disk 8192k
Ram 512k (<---should this be 2gb, now that I have 2gbs of Ram installed)
Thank you guys/gals so much! You rule! I love you.
Message was edited by: Nelso

David, your a genius!!! You posted your reply on my birthday, and I missed it until today!
Fotomagico is devastatingly easy to use and absolutely makes me want to cry at the amount of time I wasted creating photo slideshows in FCP!
I opened Fotomagico up and created a slideshow, one that I had already created in FCP and had take me FIVE HOURS to create... in TEN MINUTES!!!!!!!!! Aaaaaaaaah.
I couldn't believe it. I thought there had to be a catch or something. This was too easy the quality can't be there... but it was. It's amazing and I can't thank you enough for all the future hours you have saved for me.
Al Romero

Need Help Pasting Key Frames from one still image to others, and Changing the duration of multiple still images.

I'm working on a stop motion project, and I have at least a thousand still images to work with.
I have adjusted several Key Frame settings on the 1st still image in my project, such as
Brightness
Cropping
Scale
Position
I now want to apply these exact settings to hundreds of still images at a time that make up one scene in the project (but not all still images in the entire project).. Is there a way to paste or easily transfer them?
Also, there are scenes I'm working on in which I want to change the image duration of hundreds of photos at once, but not change to duration of all images in the project, is this possible?
I've looked at several different web-links, but none of them have what I'm looking for. If you can please help me, I'd be willing to send you $10 through paypal. Knowledge is power; the solution to these problems would save me hours of time. If you don't fully understand my questions I can send you a pictures or a video, pointing out my needs.

Stan,
Thanks again for your input.
When the project is created, I don't recall seeing the preference settings until after the project opens the first time. In that case if certain media was imported into the project panel but not in the sequence, after the duration was changed, it would be necessary to remove the media from the project panel then re-import again. If there is a workaround to this please let me know. It also doesn't appear that creating a new sequence would prevent the re-importing. Could you confirm?
Thanks for the link on automating to sequence--I remember that from CS4.
The application of identical effects to media on the timeline in a sequence was something I had learned back in CS3 or maybe earlier CS4 where the effected, in this case a transition between images was applied then copied then using the paste or (Control V) command, applied to all other stills. That worked fine but with lots of images, it ends up being a lot of "point and clicks" since the CTI must be moved to each transition insertion point before the paste is applied.
I actually thought that I had seen someone select the remainder of the images in the sequence then apply the paste command but I was never able to make that work. Have you heard of such a short-cut?
Much thanks again!!

Which color space to save still images for FCP?

When saving still images as TIFF files to be brought into FCP, what color space should the files be saved in? The Adobe color space or SRGB, or other?
Thanks.

sRGB/JPEG is the best because all the color information is encoded in the actual image when you create a JPEG, as JPEGs don't carry color space information with them, like .PSD and .TIFF do.
As for sRGB, that is as close as there is to a universal color space for monitors, and you are least likely to find a surprise when you check across many monitors. The tradeoff is a reduced color gamut if you display on a well calibrated broad gamut monitor.
The gamma matters all the way through, if you want what you see in Photoshop to match what you see on a calibrated display monitor. The newest Photoshop, and Lightroom, use a native gamma of 2.2, which matches all video displays (not computer displays). If you generate JPEGs from them, they will have a gamma of 2.2. You then need to import them into FCP with a gamma of 2.2 for the interpretation. If you go directly to DVD from there, all is fine. If you go to a Quicktime movie, you need to know what the codec you plan to use will do. ProRes maintains the existing gamma, H.264 lightens up to 1.8, as does animation. I haven't characterized the others.

Working with still images SOOO slow in Motion 3! Any advice?

Hi Everyone,
I am fairly new to Motion, so please bear with any n00bness I bring. I've hunted the forums for a good half hour now but still not found a sufficient solution.
I am editing a Standard Def project for a client, and for the intro to the piece, they want there to be a bunch of still images flying onto the screen to create a mosaic of about 70 or so pictures. The idea is to start zoomed in on one picture (the pictures are all portraits of people) so that it fills the screen, and then to have the image recede and grow smaller. As the picture grows smaller, another fills the screen and also grows smaller. This continue with all 70 pics until they've all grown small and joined the mosaic.
I've played with some effects and found the "Light Rays" glow effect to be the feel I am looking for, and would like each photo to come onto the screen using this effect at the beginning as it fills the screen.
My problem, though, is that I'm only on my 2nd picture, and it's already SO slow. I tried lowering render resolution to draft and image to half, third, or even quarter. But the problem is that when I lower resolution, it doesn't merely degrade the image quality. It actually crops my 2nd image, and so even though it plays more smoothly, I only see a tiny portion of the image, and I can't properly time the effects or fly ins. It doesn't crop my first image, though, and for some reason, even if I solo this 2nd picture, it's still incredibly slow. I have to remove all effects from it for even the simple resize effect to play smoothly. The file is only 276kb and 842x1080. Does this sound right? Is there anything I can do so that Motion doesn't crop the photo when I lower resolution to improve playback?
Also, Motion tends to freeze after a while to my commands. It'll keep playing back the project (albeit in a very stuttery way) but it'll take 10-20 secs for it to respond to my hitting the stop or pause button. Is there any way I can remedy this?
Thanks SO much in advance!!!!
Message was edited by: SuperMonk7

hi,
the first thing you can do is to pre-flight your images. make them as big as you need them in your final compostion, so if the biggest you're seeing them is full screen, make them that size. I use native photoshop files or PNGs, rather than tiffs or jpegs, they just seem to work better for me.
As you work, especially if you are using something like light rays, you;re going to have to render the sequence to watch it in real time. so do a RAM render to watch anything.
Once you have the rays working as you'd like, turn them off to work on the animation aspect. Then turn it on for the render and export.
not sure why the image is being cropped, but try the other stuff first and put the render quality back up to normal
hth
adam

Using still image in FCP and Motion

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