Motion hates red?

J

Jedd

Member
So I made some text with a white gradient on it and put the motion file on a prores final cut timeline.

White gradient looked fine.

http://www.jeddwinn.com/help/redgrad/motion1.jpg

Then I tried red and got jagged edges everywhere.

http://www.jeddwinn.com/help/redgrad/motion2.jpg

When I did the same thing with a light blue gradient it looked fine like the white.

http://www.jeddwinn.com/help/redgrad/motion3.jpg

Why does motion / fcp hate my red gradient? All the settings remained the same. I would just modify the gradient color, save and reconnect the media in FCP.

My motion and final cut settings are all on best quality render, etc. (here is a screen shot for each.)

http://www.jeddwinn.com/help/redgrad/motion4.jpg
http://www.jeddwinn.com/help/redgrad/motion5.jpg

Anybody have any ideas? I'm stumped.

By the way, it's doing the same thing with solid colors too.
 
David. Thanks for the response.

I know that red bleeds, but jagged edges? Crisp aliased jagged edges?

The Final cut timeline is prores and the motion file was dropped right on top of it.

Did you look at the screen shots?
 
Try looking at it on a broadcast monitor- the FCP canvas preview is not your final word on image quality. But yeah sharp red is always going to look worse than any other color.

Noah
 
Well, I'm posting my findings. As with a lot of projects I do now-a-days, my clients seem to want a dvd and a web version. So how do I get it to look good in both.

Yes it looks better in a broadcast monitor. Yes video doesn't like red. But that is a frustrating answer to give someone that is tearing their hair out.

Different compression codecs seem to handle the red issue differently. I tested dvcprohd, prores and animation with both 960x720 and 1280x720 pixel ratios.

dvcpro and prores both have jagged lines. They both look fine on TV but no good for internet delivery. Animation comes out nice and smooth. But it is a huge render and the entire timeline has to be set to animation. That means rendering all your standard video clips to get the one graphic in the piece looking good. (Is there a better / faster way to do this?)

So the issue is not just video hates red. It's certain video codecs do and others don't. Not everyone can afford a $2000-$5000 broadcast monitor. Maybe that means I'm not a pro. And not every project is for broadcast only.

My advice to the next guy:
Try burning a quick dvd of your clip and watching it on a tv. And for internet delivery make a new timeline with the compressor set to animation.

I hope that helps.

PS: Tim Joy. I'm pretty sure those dvcpro settings in motion are for pixel aspect ratio only. Motion files have a special apple intermediary codec until you export them from motion and pick a codec or render them in fcp.
 
Jedd,

I also had problems with red using the DVCPRO codec. I found that once I converted to either Cineform or ProRes the results were much better. Give it a shot, it may help.
 
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