FCP and Motion, workflow and output????

G

googalizer

Member
I just finished some pro-bono work for a client and when i output to DVD the image is choppy? I'll try to explain

It was a promo spot for XS energy drinks. I shot it all in front of a green screen in my garage. The guy that wanted me to make this video didn't really tell me what they were planing, he just wanted me to shoot it and then gave me the freedom to edit it the way I wanted.

I basically have two actors doing a Hanz and Franz bit a-la saturday night live. So I'm making intros with stock footage then shots of the actors doing there thing, and breaking it up with little commerical spots about what they're talking about like a infomercial or something.

Most of the work i did in Motion. I'm wondering if there's a problem with my workflow. You see I'll start in FCP and trim up the clips the way I want, one clip at a time. Then I'll export each as quicktime files and open them in Motion. Then I'll add all the motion graphics and text. Also I use ditigal juice backgrounds, overlays, stockfootage, etc.

When i'm finished in motion I'll export that as a quicktime. Then I'll go back into FCP and import the file/files and put all the pieces together and continue with the project. However the quality is lost sometimes. You can see it in the text. Also the stock footage is choppy too, that might be because of the settings I used when i captured.

Then when i burn it to a dvd the problems are magnified!

Now I'm pretty new to using a green screen. In fact this project is the most I've used it. Some of the problems I'm having are in the way I lit the actors. So I've learned my lesson there.

But in reguards to my workflow. Is there a better way to transfer files from Motion and FCP with out loosing quality? And also with the buring to DVD with iDVD?

The project is being done for free because of my inexperence but I don't want to give out less then great quality because there's a good potental for future work here.

I hope I explained it well enough for ya.
 
Can you show examples? Like, a frame from Motion and then the same frame once you've imported it back in FCP (showing the quality loss).

The cause could be a lot of things. For example, what are your export settings from Motion?
 
Sure I'll see what I can do. However....how am I supposed to show a shot from motion to you without first outputting it?

I'll try.
 
I don't have an answer regarding the choppy footage, but as far as your workflow is concerned when you have a clip in the timeline in FCP you can just right-click it and choose "Send to" and then choose "Motion Project." You'll be prompted to save the Motion project and then Motion will open. Do your work, save it, then exit Motion. The clip in the FCP timeline will then be an unrendered piece of footage that will be the results of the Motion work that you did.

Much easier, much faster, and more reliable. Also, there's no generational quality loss in the footage.

Hope that helps.
 
I do tons of FCP projects using Motion and LT elements. I will sometines export a dv out of FCP and bring it into Motion so I can line things up but I always delete the movie background and bring the elements into FCP and render all before I output to a dv final or DVD. What did you shoot in DV? DV is 4:1:1 so green screen results arn't as good as 4:2:2. The HVX-200 using 720P is 4:2:2 and gives better results. You can also capture DV and then setup the project as uncompressed 8bit or10bit. This allows your text and motion graphics to remain crisp. If you output to DV first then it all gets compressed to a softer looking image because of DV. I will go out of the uncompressed project after rendering all into compressor for DVD settings. Use a 10 second piece of film and do some tests to see if this helps or if you like it. The uncompressed files will be a lot bigger so use a short piece to save time on testing.
Hope this helps some.
Good luck!
 
Hey thank everyone for the help. I have another question for Krestofre:

Sometimes when i'm makeing a motion segment it is a lot more than just one clip from the timeline in FCP. I mean I'll have a background clip, and some pictures, then more clips that say fly by or something, then I'll make a transition in motion to the next clip and have some titles blah blah blah.

I guess what I'm saying is that I export them one clip at a time because I need them in a folder so I can grab them in motion.

Now if I right click and sent to motion, that sounds way easier but a lot of my editing for this type of spot is done in motion and not on the timeline in FCP. So i don't know how I would arrange then in FCP in order to send them to motion if I don't really know what the edit it going to be at that point. I don't think that made since but I hope someone knows what I'm talking about.
 
Michael T. Thanks for the info. I know about what your saying but not enough yet to know what I'm supposed to do with that info. I have the DVX 100b. Which setting do you think would be best used for the green screen. I bet I could find the answer to this in another thread, but if you know........
 
googalizer said:
I don't think that made since but I hope someone knows what I'm talking about.
Click to expand...

I do, hehe.

If you're dealing with a lot of different clips and you don't have a cut ready in FCP yet, then by all means go ahead and just import the segments directly into Motion (put them in one folder so it's easier to manage). I do this kind of stuff a lot these days and I often use FCP to cut up the original clips (so you only work with what you need in Motion) and combine the final elements (Motion clips, audio, etc.) for output.

I rarely use Send to Motion as I've found it to be buggy on some occasions (for example, text alignment would be different from what you see in Motion and what you get back in FCP).

For elements that don't need to have a transparency I often export directly to NTSC DV from Motion. If I'm creating overlays that must go over other elements, I export to Apple Animation, that's the "Lossless + Alpha Movie" export preset in Motion. This is the same codec that Motion projects revert to when used directly in an FCP timeline (ie. if you drag a Motion project to your sequence).

The side effect with using Animation is that it creates very large files. In my case most of my current project are very short so size isn't a big issue.

I'd also recommend that you split up your motion graphics projects into segments whenever possible. Once you have a general idea of what you want to do, build it up in seperate "layers". For example, create a project for your background, another one for your text, etc. Then export from each and put it all together. This does mean you will have lots of switching between files if you make changes, but will make final rendering much faster, not to mention actual scrubbing and making changes in Motion (as it'll need to do less on-the-spot calculations).

Hope this helps.
 
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googalizer said:
I guess what I'm saying is that I export them one clip at a time because I need them in a folder so I can grab them in motion.

Now if I right click and sent to motion, that sounds way easier but a lot of my editing for this type of spot is done in motion and not on the timeline in FCP. So i don't know how I would arrange then in FCP in order to send them to motion if I don't really know what the edit it going to be at that point. I don't think that made since but I hope someone knows what I'm talking about.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. Your first post didn't give this much detail about your needs so I thought I'd throw out the right-click thing as a suggestion. It sounds like you've got some specialized needs and a workflow that works for you.
 
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