Still images will not export correctly

Question

Still images will not export correctly

Hi,
I have a 22 minute project with 3 video tracks, an .avi movie, some .mov from my camera and then some jpegs from my camera.
Everything looks fine, expect when I export, the jpegs look awful, a lot of artifacts, jagged edges and blurry.
When I watch it as a quicktime movie on my monitor it looks just as awful as when I burn to dvd and watch on my tv. After reading a bunch of forums I still cannot figure it out.
I have tried a dv time line and an 8-bit uncompressed timeline. I have tried uncompressed (I have plenty of space and time 🙂 to quicktime then let DVDSP do the encoding, and I have tried export with compressor to Mpeg2 best settings.
My jpegs are on average 3000 x 2250 photoshop jpeg. My timeline is ntsc 4:3.
Any idea what I am doing wrong, any tips?
Thank you!

MacPro, Mac OS X (10.5.7), Final Cut Pro 6.0.5 compressor 3.0.5

Posted on Jun 16, 2009 7:55 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

David S.

Level 7

20,630 points

Jun 16, 2009 8:37 AM in response to Danielle Smit

FCP has to scale those huge jpeg images, something that it doesn't do well.

If you are not moving or panning those images, why are they so big?

Convert them to the size of your canvas as 1 dpi, and switch to tiff or png

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Answer 2

Jun 16, 2009 8:39 AM in response to Danielle Smit

Your 3k jpgs are being scaled to 480x720 by FCP's notoriously awful rendering engine. If you are doing any movement or rotation, artifacting can get horrible.
There are many possible ways to make this a bit better but before you invest any time on an elitist's possibly incorrect suggestion, try scaling one or more of your jpegs to a more reasonable size out of PS and doing some experiments.

We see this topic almost daily so try searching the forum, too.

bogiesan

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Answer 3

Jun 16, 2009 12:45 PM in response to David Bogie Chq-1

Thank you both!
I have been experimenting and yes scaling down those jpegs helped a lot! It seems very counterintuitive to keep the pixels down in an image, always thought the more, the better quality!
I still get artifacts, but it is acceptable now, so much better.
If you dont mind telling me; for future reference in 4:3 project, you suggest keeping the photos close to 720 x 480, tiff is better than jpeg?
And, what is the best setting for my timeline when I start with quicktime movies of 640 x 480 and add mixed media (photos, movies, graphics) and export in compressor to mpeg2?
Thanks so much!
D

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Answer 4

Jun 16, 2009 4:01 PM in response to Danielle Smit

If you dont mind telling me; for future reference in 4:3 project, you suggest keeping the photos
close to 720 x 480, tiff is better than jpeg?

It depends on what you want to do with the image. If you need to zoom into it, you want to reach the pixel level at full frame. So you kind of draw a DV-sized box around the part of the image you need to have fill the frame and calculate from there.

And, what is the best setting for my timeline when I start with quicktime movies of 640 x 480 and
add mixed media (photos, movies, graphics) and export in compressor to mpeg2?

Our various methods of going to DVD or MPEG2 are all mutually exclusive. Most of the elitists around here will suggest that you always use Compressor. But not me, no, I just import DV directly into DVDSP and let the default transcoder settings run the show. However, when I need to, I will slog through Compressor's custom settings to get maximum image quality.

bogiesan

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Answer 5

Nick Holmes

Level 7

30,018 points

Jun 16, 2009 4:24 PM in response to David Bogie Chq-1

Most of the elitists around here....

Elitists..?
In My Final Cut Pro forum?

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