Aliasing issue in FCP from AE
by Eric Mousel
on
Oct 7, 2008 at 10:10:58 pm
Hi all,
A problem like this has been posted before but this situation is a tad different.
When bringing motion graphics into FCP from AE we're experiencing some jagginess on the curves of some text. Two projects have had this happen now. One was created and delivered in SD, the other was created in HD and delivered in SD. I have gone over all the gotcha's in regard to pixel aspect ratio, proper frame rate, sequence settings, etc. and haven't been able to solve the problem.
The only detail that makes this problem unique is that it's only happening to red text. We're monitoring it on Cinema displays and a SD NTSC monitor. Text that was rendered together looks great except for portions that are red. There is even some text with a red to black gradient. The red half has jaggies. The black portion does not.
Has anyone ever experienced this before? Again, we've combed the footage on both monitors. It's only the red portions of text.
Eric Mousel
Creative Services Producer
KMIZ/KQFX/KZOU
Re: Aliasing issue in FCP from AE by Dave LaRonde on Oct 7, 2008 at 10:28:38 pm
[Eric Mousel]"we're experiencing some jagginess on the curves of some text... it's only happening to red text. We're monitoring it on Cinema displays and a SD NTSC monitor... There is even some text with a red to black gradient. The red half has jaggies. The black portion does not. Has anyone ever experienced this before?"
Yup. Do this: OPEN UP YOUR FCP SCOPE WINDOWS, AND KEEP 'EM OPEN FROM NOW ON. Fix it so you can see both the vectorscope and waveform monitor. Monitors are nice, but scopes are absolutely necessary.
You will notice that the red vector is way past the circle on the vectorscope. That means that your red is oversaturated, and it's very likely the source of your woes. So you need to fix the reds in AE.
So how can you monitor illegal color saturation in AE? I recommend an inexpensive plugin called Scopo Gigio. It's a software waveform and vectorscope for AE. Once you set it up right, it won't tell you lies. I suggest setting it for 16-235, 75% bars. Then you don't have to keep jumping from AE to FCP to fix something.
If the Scopo Gigio waveform monitor says that the video levels are too hot, don't worry about it too much. But get that color saturation right!
Dave LaRonde
Sr. Promotion Producer
KCRG-TV (ABC) Cedar Rapids, IA
Re: Aliasing issue in FCP from AE by david bogie on Oct 7, 2008 at 10:32:50 pm
What does the red look like on a vectorscope?
Rendering settings get very subtle when trying to do reds. The color space that is specific to any particular codec will force certain adjacent pixels (known as pixel risetime) to be handled in certain ways since you are doing severe compression going from vector text to rasterized bitmaps. Something has to give. SD and HD are only descriptions of the format, they do not indicate the exact codec used in the rendering. Nor do you really indicate that the timeline is exactly matched to the codec of the AE files. If not, then your AE clipsa re being processed to the fit the timeline codec and that involves more color space and pixel risetime conversions.
This doesn't help, sorry.
bogiesan
This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: "For crying out loud, read the freakin' manual."
Re: Aliasing issue in FCP from AE by Brandon McFarland on May 13, 2009 at 1:15:32 am
I was running into this problem when editing in ProRes 422HQ sequences, then I found a solution that allows you to keep your reds wherever you want them from AE to FCP. All I did was change my render output to Animation in AE and then export my sequence from FCP as Animation.
If you wanna do a test just duplicate your FCP sequence and change your sequence settings to Animation as well and your aliased red text should be smoothed out.
