Sizing still images for video

Be careful with Photoshop's aspect ratio settings, they can be misleading if you don't use them properly. The best thing to do is get your scans to 800x600 and then resize them to 720x486 (or 480 for DV).

Jared
Idea Spring Editing, Inc.
Denver Final Cut Pro UG

You can use Photoshop's aspect ratio if you want to, but if you don't understand how it works, it will do you no good. For example you are using a square pixel image, you must make sure that your aspect is square, and if you use a rectangle pixel image (say a still from FCP) you must make sure it is set that way.

As for doing it the old fashioned way like I mentioned before.

Scan your image. Crop and scale the image until you have what you want at 800x600. Make sure that Constrain Proportions is checked. Then go to image size and change it to 720x486 (480 for DV). Make sure that Constrain Proportions is not checked. This makes your image with rectangle pixels for video. And you are done. Very easy.



Jared
Idea Spring Editing, Inc.
Denver Final Cut Pro UG

I do a lot of work with still images in fcp and FWIW I size everything at about a maximum of 1000 pixels. This allows me to do a lot of camera movement in fcp (zooms, pans tilts ,etc.) and still maintain pretty good image quality. Regardless of how you size them, if you have a lot of them to do I recommend Dr. Russel Brown's Image processor. It will auto resize and save images as jpeg, tiff or psd's or all 3. It's free and you can download it at http://www.russellbrown.com also LOTS of great Photoshop info at this site.

Please be aware if you bring an image into FCP, say 800 x 600, you don't need to convert it to rectangle pixels, FCP will do that for you. You only need to worry about that when you are working with 720x486, which mean no movement on the image as it is full frame.

Jared
Idea Spring Editing, Inc.
Denver Final Cut Pro UG

Yes, you can bring the 800 x 600 image into FCP directly, and it will be displayed properly. However, when you put it in the timeline FCP will automatically scale it to fit. You can go it to the motion tab and change all of that if you want to move it.

Jared
Idea Spring Editing, Inc.
Denver Final Cut Pro UG

1000 to 1200 pixels as a maximum dimension usually works for a vertical still that you want to fill the frame horizontally with. My personal preference is to fill the frame,and do a tilt move, rather than have all the black space.

I always start with the largest, highest quality scan I can possibly have any use for, then you only have to scan it once, you can always size it down. I normally use 300 ppi, but because you are sizing the image to pixels ie. 800 x 600 or whatever, I have not really seen any difference in the final video with a scan done at 150 ppi or 300 ppi -

Karl,

Instead of repeating some great information here, I would strongly recommend the following links for terrific info on using images in FCP (and Photoshop):

<http://www.larryjordan.biz/articles.html#images>

<http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/basic_ps.html>

<http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/basic_ps_scan_crop.html>

<http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/basic_ps_stills_to_fcp.html>

<http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/basic_stills_fcp_ps.html>

The articles linked above talk all about going from scan to Photoshop to FCP and back to Photoshop, including:

* square versus rectangular pixels
* "resolution" or "DPI" issues
* color space conversions
* pixel sizes for different video frame sizes

I would warn you that some of the information provided in a few of the articles may be dated (and not altogether accurate), depending on the versions of Photoshop and FCP that you are using.

While the "panning and zooming" features built into FCP are good, I would suggest that you check out Lyric's "Pan Zoom Pro" if you're planning on doing a lot of serious motion with still images. It is terrific and reasonably priced and you use it from within FCP ($49). If you'd rather use a standalone application, check out "Photo to Movie" by LQ Graphics.

Pan Zoom Pro <http://www.lyric.com/fcp-plugins/panzoompro/pzp.htm>
Photo to Movie <http://lqgraphics.com/software/phototomovie.php>


-Dave

Dave, once again, thanks! I will check out the links and do some afternoon reading. I bought the pan and zoom tool. Karl