FCP Exporting

D

Daniel Rigdon

Member
Ok, with my recent switch to Macs and FCP 5 I'm having lots of issues. Everything looks great in the timeline, but when I render, it looks like crap. I'm selecting the best quality too. Can anyone help me with exact settings to help me out.

I have 4:3 ratio SD footage.

Sequence Settings...
Frame Size: 640 X 480 NTSC, Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square, Compressor: DV/DVCPRO - NTSC, Quality 100%.

Something is messed up bad, because the exported footage looks SOOO extremely bad! This is my first time to edit with Final Cut. What I'm I doing wrong?


(Apple sent me the academic instead of the full version be mistake, is this the problem? I'm going to get the full copy, but I think that maybe that has something to do with it)

Thanks for any help you can give!
 
has nothing to do with the academic version. they are the same you just cant upgrade the academic version.
 
DV pixels are not square, so you should be using 720x480 non-square pixels in your sequence. Also, if you drop your footage into the timeline and you get a red render bar over it, you know you have the wrong sequence settings, because you don't have to render clips that properly match the sequence. This is easy to check. Look in your footage bin and check out the clips' characteristics, and duplicate these in your sequence settings. And of course, all this is in the manual.
 
Flash said:
DV pixels are not square, so you should be using 720x480 non-square pixels in your sequence. Also, if you drop your footage into the timeline and you get a red render bar over it, you know you have the wrong sequence settings, because you don't have to render clips that properly match the sequence. This is easy to check. Look in your footage bin and check out the clips' characteristics, and duplicate these in your sequence settings. And of course, all this is in the manual.
Click to expand...

I did as you said, but there is still a red line. I still have to render to watch in the time-line. Anymore advice? I just exported in the EXACT settings as the clips, but it's still bad. I looked in the manual and can't figure it out.
 
If you export as QT make sure to set quality to best in QT Player (Get info -> Video -> Quality) and save. If not QT will display 1/2 res.

Check fps, size, sound rate, etc compared to sequence. If you have red then something isn't matching.
 
Also, it's not just in the Audio/Video Settings, there's another menu under the Sequence drop-down along the top of the screen called Settings. There's a "bug" in FCP where this does not always default to what the project is set to, but this is the one that matters, so be sure you set all these correctly too. As Scott, said, ALL of the settings must match your footage. What did you shoot on?
 
Scottdvx100 said:
If you export as QT make sure to set quality to best in QT Player (Get info -> Video -> Quality) and save. If not QT will display 1/2 res.
Click to expand...

That's true, but when you open a video in the finder with Quicktime, it has a default setting to play back the video at low quality. This is one of the reasons most editors use video screens to check quality, action-safe areas, and color correction.
 
Flash said:
Also, it's not just in the Audio/Video Settings, there's another menu under the Sequence drop-down along the top of the screen called Settings. There's a "bug" in FCP where this does not always default to what the project is set to, but this is the one that matters, so be sure you set all these correctly too. As Scott, said, ALL of the settings must match your footage. What did you shoot on?
Click to expand...

I shot DV with the HVX200. 480/60i. Thanks for all your help. I'll see if any of this works.
 
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