resized images and video seam blurred in motion 4...

Thanks for responding.
I'm of course sizing my picture down. The project I was working on yesterday that helped me notice the problem is 300x300 pixels and the images are around 500x1000 pixels, scaled down to around 20%.
I haven't notice today that the problem occurs in other project as well. Before I was not looking in detail at the quality, and if no one tells you about it, you won't notice it. But right now all my old projects done in Motion 3, once opened in Motion 4 seam to have that blurry effect on any image or video that is scaled down.

I understand that Motion might maybe not be very good at scale down things, and might do it less perfetly then Photoshop. But what is odd is that all my old video exported when I had Motion 3 have sharp perfect scaled down images comparred to what I get today in Motion 4.

The blur I'm speaking about is very light. You won't notice it easily unless you have an old version of the same video to compare it with. But in the project I was working yesterday at 300x300 pixel, the difference was really very obvious, because at this size every detail counts.

My idea to solve my problem temporarly was to change my Motion project settings to triple its original size (from 300x300 to 900x900) and blow up everthing 300%, export the video at 900x900 and then scale it down through Quicktime instead of Motion at 300x300. This worked and my images are as sharp as they should be. This project is short and light, so I didn't mind doing this conversion, but when I will work with projects that need more render time, it's not a productiv way to work!

I noticed another odd thing about the problem, I hope I will explain this clearly by describing 3 situations:

1. I create in Motion 4 a new project with any preset.
2. I import an image or a video
3. I scale it down, by pulling one corner (=> the image or video becomes blurred)
4. In the properties inspector I type the word "100" to get it back to 100%
=> the image is still blurred, it is difficult to see, but when I import again the same image and put it next to it you can see a difference althought both image are at 100%!!!

or

1. I create in Motion 4 a new project with any preset.
2. I import an image or a video
3. I scale it down, by pulling one corner (=> the image or video becomes blurred)
4. In the properties inspector I click on the arrow in the top right corner of that reverts to the original settings the image or video
=> the image is perfect

or

1. I create in Motion 4 a new project with any preset.
2. I import an image or a video
3. I scale it down, by typing any number in the properties inspector (=> the image or video becomes blurred)
4. In the properties inspector I type the word "100" to get it back to 100%
=> the image is perfect

So it seams that my problem occurs even at 100% but only if the image has first been modified in its size by pulling one corner and than put back to 100% through the properties inspector...

hmmmm
very odd.

Louie

Message was edited by: Louie13

Thanks again for trying to help!

1. I always press the shift key when scaling an image or video. And I always check that the X and Y have the exact same number.

2. Actually your comment isn't relevent to my problem, because even if I was not scaling proportionnally it dosen't explain, why my old motion 3 project exported perfect quality videos and when I open them in motion 4 without changing anything at all, they are all blurred. And secondly you don't seam to have understood the exemples I gave in my last post, or even tried to reproduced them. Because when you type 100% in the properties inspector whatever number has x y z, they all get back to 100%. Have a look and you will see.

3. One more detail, there is no black dot on the scale slider in my exemples, so the images should be perfectly scaled at 100% and should not be blurred.

Message was edited by: Louie13

Message was edited by: Louie13

Message was edited by: Louie13

Thanks, it's a good idea to show you what I see.
I created a new motion project with my exemples and I took a screen shot of what I see when I open that project.
You can find a link here to download the folder with the Motion 4 project, the 2 images (psd) linked to it and the screenshot I took (jpg):

http://download.yousendit.com/RmNBUGhlUzd0QTFjR0E9PQ

The link is only valid 7 days.

ps: is there a way to post the image of my screenshot on the forum?

Louie

I still haven't found a satisfying solution for my problem.

1. The first easy solution I had was to blow up my project 3 times it's size. I first scaled the project setting from 300x300 to 900x900, and then grouped all my elements in one group, and scaled it 300%. I then exported it at 900x900. And then I scaled it back to 300x300 through Quicktime. This made my images crisp and perfect. But I had an other problem. By scaling all my elements, it seams that it didn't scaled the paths of my animation, and some of my images move now in odd directions.

2. The second easy solution, was to keep the project at 300x300 pixels, but export it at 900x900. This kept my animation right, but again a new problem occured. While exporting I got 3 alert messages telling me each time that a certain image has a to high resolution (it said they are over around 2000x3000 pixel if I remember well) and therefore they will be rendered in low quality. This was odd, because I 've check and all my picture are under 1000x1000 pixels. And what is strange is that I didn't got these messages in the exemple above. And the other odd thing is that once the video was exported, the images where not in low def, but pieces was missing on one and on another there was lines of interfences that appeared.

3. The final solution I had was to uninstall Motion 4 and install back Motion 3. I did this and it worked. I first uninstalled the complete final cut studio 3 with fsc remover programm. And then installed final cut studio 2. And now all the images in all my old and new projects are perfect as they used to. But this is a temporary solution.

So I still hope someone can help me, and maybe explain me what went wrong in the solutions number 1. and 2. 🙂

Louie