importing still photos into final cut
by James Roche
on
Sep 28, 2008 at 9:54:03 pm
Hello
I am a stop-motion animator, taking large digital still images into Final Cut Pro to edit. There are several problems that seem to arise each time I make an animation. First, when I bring in images that I have resized as 720 by 480 in Photoshop, to animate in my FCP time line, FCP stretches the images. I know that I am saving the images with square pixels and then changing the project setting for square pixels, but no matter how I save the pixels in Photoshop the images open in FCP with the .9 aspect ratio. Is there a way to change the pixel aspect ratio default that FCP uses when it brings in stills? My camera takes images at 1936 x1288 which is a 3:2 aspect ratio, so why are they getting distorted or stretched? I'm frustrated because I know that there is a way to do this right. Is there a really good resource online or in a book for solving these problems? Also I am having a "fuzziness" or slight interlacing look that appears periodically in the images, do you know what causes this?
thanks
Re: importing still photos into final cut by David Roth Weiss on Sep 28, 2008 at 11:01:45 pm
[James Roche]"First, when I bring in images that I have resized as 720 by 480 in Photoshop, to animate in my FCP time line, FCP stretches the images."
Why are you resizing to 720x480? That's DV, and if you're editing in a DV timeline that's a big mistake from the start, as DV compression will aboslutely hammer your images and text as well.
Why don't you start by telling us what the destination is of your completed work so we can help you logically with a workflow that isn't flawed from the start.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW's Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
Re: importing still photos into final cut by James Roche on Sep 29, 2008 at 12:44:42 am
yes I have been working in DV but I would like to work in a larger format, just not sure how to get started, my camera takes pictures in 1936 x 1288, what sort of project should I be working in? I would eventually like to be able to burn my work back to DVD.
thanks
jjr
Re: importing still photos into final cut by David Roth Weiss on Sep 29, 2008 at 1:22:05 am
You first have to decide if you ultimately want to create a widescreen DVD (16x9) or a 4x3 DVD.
Then, open a new sequence and change the sequence settings to DV50 rather than DV before palcing any medai on te timeline. The color space of DV50 will not compress the smitherines out of your stills, text, and graphics like DV will. And, if you want to create a widescreen DVD, then check the anamorphic check box. You will see the canvas change shape.
Now, drag and drop one of your stills onto the timeline and see what happens re[port back here.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW's Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
