Why does 50% look better than 100%?

Ferret Lady

Ferret Lady

Well-known member
I have a client coming over that I'll be doing a music video for tomorrow, because they want to see a project I'm working on for another artist. I'm getting this all ready to show them the project in FCP but something is bothering me. When I'm viewing the video either in the canvas or the viewer, it looks great at 50% size, but not as great at 100%. It looks kinda like it has lines through it, like it needs to be de-interlaced. I understand that at a smaller size, it's gonna look better, but it's not like i'm trying to blow the video up to a size larger than 100% here. I've attached a picture. look at his shoulders and top of his head if you don't see it right away. Any ideas? I'd like to show this to my clients at full size so any advice, as always, is much appreciated.

largepic.png
 
Putting the video at 100% in FC shows both fields where as showing it at less than 100% only shows one field. Do you have an external monitor you could show it on? Pretty much anything would be better than showing them the Viewer or Canvas window inside FCP.


-A
 
both fields? i dont really know what that means.. yes i'm amateur i know.

i do have a tv, but it's kinda older. the sound is going and i think the picture isnt perfect either.

maybe i should just export a quicktime video then.......
 
scratchpatchfilms said:
both fields? i dont really know what that means.. yes i'm amateur i know.

i do have a tv, but it's kinda older. the sound is going and i think the picture isnt perfect either.

maybe i should just export a quicktime video then.......
Click to expand...

Interlace by Wikipedia

A field is half a frame of video. NTSC video is designed to be shown on a TV that shows one field every 1/60th of a second. When you set the Canvas to 100% you are seeing both fields at exactly the same time because your computer monitor is progressive, not interlaced. This is why you see the jagged edges. To "de-interlace" means you are basically discarding one field.

Watching SD, interlaced footage inside FCP on a computer monitor is about inaccurate as you can get in terms of image quality so as long as the TV barely works it'll still show a more proper image than FCP will. ;)


-A
 
Yeah, if you have a way to put that on a TV or monitor it will look better. Run a FW cable from your mac to your camera, then the video from the cam to the TV. Then click view>video playback> Apple firewire NTSC

You won't get much better results from a QT video. You are watching an SD file, which is 720x480 on a screen at around 1600x1000 or so, depending on your monitor. Full screen SD just doesn't look good that way without being optimized somehow. That's why SD looks better on an SD monitor; that's what it was designed for.
 
adkimery said:
Interlace by Wikipedia

A field is half a frame of video. NTSC video is designed to be shown on a TV that shows one field every 1/60th of a second. When you set the Canvas to 100% you are seeing both fields at exactly the same time because your computer monitor is progressive, not interlaced. This is why you see the jagged edges. To "de-interlace" means you are basically discarding one field.

Watching SD, interlaced footage inside FCP on a computer monitor is about inaccurate as you can get in terms of image quality so as long as the TV barely works it'll still show a more proper image than FCP will. ;)


-A
Click to expand...

Ok thanks very much! and thanks to Jim too! I'll see what i can do with getting it to look good on the TV. the only reason i wanted to do it in FCP is because it's not DONE yet, and when i tried exporting a quicktime video on a dvd and watching it on my tv, the colour didnt look good. but i havent finished colour correction yet so i assumed that was why... anyways i'm going to try again so thanks guys..
 
Yeah, you shouldn't have to export to view it on an external monitor. You should be able to view it right from the timeline.
 
Those don't really look like interlace lines to me. Those look like aliasing or artifacting.

Remember if you are shooting interlaced video or standard def video, a computer monitor is the place where it will look the worst. Same goes for Hi-Def excpet mayne on an LCD TV with lots of sharpening and consumer image enhancement features. Anyway, point is LCD computer monitors are higher resolution than standard definition and if it's an LCD like most are today as opposed to a CRT, well then you'll really see warts and interlacing.
 
Also something to keep in mind...

Viewer shows the raw video as captured. Canvas shows the video thru the 'compression' of the sequence. Should any of your settings be different you'd see different results.

How'd it look on the TV? (oh, and make sure you don't have scroll bars in either your canvas or viewer window when sending video out to monitor.

CaptM
 
You can't judge the quality of video in the FCP Canvas... EVER....

The only way to properly judge quality is on an external broadcast monitor. What you see in the Canvas is just for quick reference and is meaningless in terms of quality.
 
damn. well the cable to hook up to my tv wasnt the right one so i'll have to show them in FCP.. but i'll just explain that it is still being edited and i'm only able to show them that way, at the 50% size.

thanks everybody for your help, i definitely learned something here.. TIME TO GET AN EXTERNAL MONITOR!!!!
 
You could just play it back to the CamCorder and show on the LCD. I'm still not convinced why you think showing it at 100% on the computer monitor isn't any 'good'.

What type of cable did your friend bring over? Yellow/Red/White? Why didn't it work? Are you sure it was the wrong cable?

CaptM
 
the video still has the lines through it when played on the tv. i burned a dvd and played it on my tv. i think this has something to do with the footage being 24p..... i hope i didnt capture it wrong or something.. i tried adding the de-interlace filter which helps a little but doesnt make it perfect.....

HELP!
 
I analysed the clips in the timeline and they say they are 29.97! argg.. so the footage was 24p from a dvx100, i captured at 29.97, then edited in a 24f timeline.

I'm trying to figure out how to fix it without re-capturing now as i'm almost done this project. i tried creating a new sequence with the 29.97 frame rate and then copy and pasting my project into it, but then i end up with about every 4th frame having the lines through it. (this is if i choose Upper or Lower field dominance, not None).

any ideas?
 
Wow... you really screwed this one up.

There was plenty of information on this forum, in the manual of the camera and the manual of FCP on 24p.

Maybe NOW you should admit that you could have benefited from reading a little?

PLEASE take the time to read the stickies at the top of the forum.

Answer this one question -- WHY would you think recording 24p on the DVX would be edited in a 24 fps sequence?

Ok... answer ANOTHER question -- Are you sure you shot in 24p and not 24pA????

See -- how can we help you if you don't understand what the answer is?

ANSWER TO ALL YOUR PROBLEMS: Remove the cadence from the original footage and re edit.

CaptM
 
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I think what the captain means is that when the DVX records in 24p mode it adds a cadence so when it goes to tape it is 29.97. When you look at that cadence IN 29.97 you'll see three progressive frames and 2 combined frames for every 5.

What YOU are seeing is footage shot in 24pA mode on the DVX. This gives you 4 frames of progressive and one frame of combined.

You need to REMOVE the cadence to edit in 23.98 sequences.

24pA material captured correctly can be de-cadenced by selecting the captured clip in the browser and TOOLS - Remove Advanced Pulldown.

Not sure if this will FIX your 24fps sequences or REALLY screw them up. But that's the only way to get rid of the combined frames you are seeing.

And yes, it is all in the manuals too.

TB
 
okay... bare with me here cuz i've never had to deal with this before...

my first timeline was 24. so what you're saying is that my footage that was filmed at 24p(not sure if its A) is 29.97 actually, and in my 24 timeline, i just have to remove the advanced pulldown.

So i tried this, i went to tools, and the 'remove advanced pulldown' was greyed out. I've been doing a lot of looking around the internet for the answer to this and i think i read someone that when you capture 24p footage into fcp it automatically removes the pulldown, is this right?

let me also give one more detail.

i have two different sequences going, to test out how to fix it. the first one is 24 frames per second. the second one is 29.97 frames per second. I copied the footage from the first one, and pasted it into the second. The footage in the first sequence which is 24fps, has the lines through it on EVERY frame. The footage i copied into the second sequence, which is 29.97 (w/ upper field dominance), LOOKS PERFECT, but every FIFTH frame is interlaced, very noticably. much worse looking than the first sequence, but again, only every fifth frame.

man this is killing me.. i hope i don't have to re-capture the footage...
 
If every fifth frame is interlaced on a 29.97 timeline, then you shot 24pA. If it were 24p standard, two back-to-back frames out of every five would be interlaced.
 
oh okay. so the solution would be to re-capture the footage, but this time make sure to remove the advanced pull down in the capture settings, and use a 23.98 timeline... yes?

or is there a way I can fix the footage I already captured to save time?
 
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