crisp freeze frame vs running footage

[cyclone]

I've noticed that when I'm shooting in F6, after loading into Final Cut Pro, my frozen frames (i.e. frames I've stopped on during editing) are much cleaner and appear more focused than the same frames when the footage is running at speed. This even occurs in sequences where the camera is not moving (nor in the subject), so it wouldn't be from motion blur; there is a noticable 'softening' of hard lines. But frozen, the lines are crisp and clear. I thought that no matter what, all frames were complete as distinct frames in F6 (& F5). Shouldn't that mean that running footage of still objects should be as clean as individual frames?

 

[Policar]

Re: crisp freeze frame vs running footage

This is an FCP question, not a camera question. It's because FCP doesn't render the footage in full quality during playback because your computer is probably too slow for it to play back in full quality. For freeze frames, it figures quality is more important, but for moving video, FCP opts to keep motion intact over full resolution. It's not a problem, just a quirk of the program. The output will remain full quality no matter what once it's exported for the web, for dvd, or back on dv tape.

 

[Helmet]

Re: crisp freeze frame vs running footage

[quote author=Policar link=board=Events;num=1093222612;start=0#1 date=08/22/04 at 19:56:59]This is an FCP question, not a camera question.  It's because FCP doesn't render the footage in full quality during playback because your computer is probably too slow for it to play back in full quality.  For freeze frames, it figures quality is more important, but for moving video, FCP opts to keep motion intact over full resolution.  It's not a problem, just a quirk of the program.  The output will remain full quality no matter what once it's exported for the web, for dvd, or back on dv tape.[/quote]

Depending on your system, it might just be the playback quality settings in FCP are set too low.

Try the following:

FCP4 System Settings menu -->Playback Control tab
-->Video Quality selection set to High

On the Timeline, there is also Playback Quality selection box in the top left hand corner, just below the Sequence tab.