Final Cut Express 4.0 Low Quality Export of Stills

Thank you very much beforehand to anyone who is willing to look through this issue, it's been a long and frustrating process so far...

I am attempting to put together a stop motion animation in Final Cut Express 4.0 but my exports are always either low quality, or medium quality and stretched. I am shooting on a Canon 5D Mark ii set to take pictures at 21M 5616x3744 [999] (though I'm not entirely sure what the 21M or 999 mean).

When I first assembled my stills (unedited or altered in any way) and exported, it looked like this:

(See Attachment 1)

A relatively drastic loss in colour and quality. This was achieved exporting through quicktime conversion using the following settings:

Compression Type: H.264
Compressor Quality: Best
Size: 1920x1080 HD
Preserve aspect ratio using: Crop
Deinterlace source video: unchecked

Unhappy with the result, I went through hours of testing and researching which only yielded a result after I discovered the control-Q Easy Setup menu. I tried setting up as an apple intermediate codec using HDV-Apple Intermediate Codec 1080i60 at 29.97 fps. I kept the export settings the same as above, but knowing that I was now working with a canvas that keeps to the 16:9 proportions, I tried cropping one of my stills in photoshop to fit that 16:9 ratio.

I then imported my 16:9 cropped still and an unedited JPEG version from my camera and exported the resulting 10 second video. The result was better quality, but still noticeably degraded from the original stills. More importantly, both the cropped 16:9 and the unedited JPEG were stretched out of proportion as seen below (16:9 version):

(See Attachment 2)

Of course I forgot to note the original settings on Easy Setup so I can't figure out how to get back to the original lower quality, yet undistorted image (not that I want to do that). I tried numerous different sizes for the export including changing the Crop (when necessary) setting to letterbox. Nothing worked.

The canvas, however, immediately looked 100% better after switching the Easy Setup to HDV-Apple Intermediate Codec 1080i60 at 29.97 fps. It held the improved quality without distorting the image:

(See Attachment 3)

I'm not sure if there's any hope of having a great image quality, but at very least I would like to be able to export at the decent quality of the second screenshot without the stretching and cropping.

I need to have this resolved ASAP for work, I've already wasted too much time here. Any help is so appreciated, I'll be active in providing whatever additional information that I can to responders, though please keep in mind that I'm relatively new to all this, I don't know where to find everything.

Final Cut Express 4.0

Pinholstars, ChrisA: Thanks for the response. I understand that the quality won't be up to the standards of the SLR, but I guess my expectations were still a little higher than they should have been :/

In that case, it's a matter of trying to get back to the export that I showed in the second screenshot. That result came before I started tampering with the Easy Setup. Like I said, when I changed the setup the canvas quality improved drastically and the dimensions seemed to fit much better, but the export was vertically stretched and cropped.

Could someone suggest what I should switch the easy setup to for importing stills from my Canon 5D Mark ii since the Apple Intermediate Codec didn't seem to yield the right results? Also, am I taking the right approach in cropping the stills in photoshop to a 16:9 ratio?

Thanks again, the feedback is really appreciated!!!

Okay I'm really kicking myself now, I found an export that I did that looks fine as far as quality goes...

I uploaded a screenshot of it along with it's details in the quicktime video viewer. I need to try to replicate this, I keep trying and quicktime says they're the same formate but the old one has a higher data rate and size for some reason... I'm exporting with everything at max.

Any help is so appreciated, thank you.

TheBeastman13 said:

Try:

Compression: None
Depth: millions of colors+
Quality: best
Dimensions: 1920x1080


Or...

Compression: animation
Depth: millions of colors+
Quality: best
Dimensions: 1920x1080


Those got me the two best result out of ten combinations I attempted, but I still couldn't get an exact match with the color.

For my tests I used a photo taken from a Nikon d7100.

Opened FCE4> imported an unedited jpeg into my new project> made a ten second clip with said jpeg> rendered "all/both"> exported using QT conversion with said settings listed above.

My jpeg was:

Vid rate:29.97fps
Frame Size: 2896x1944
Compressor: photo-jpeg

Click to expand...

Hey, thanks much for looking into this!

My best result so far has been setting up FCE to work with the Apple Intermediate Codec 1080i60 (29.97fps), then I export using the H.264 compressor at Best quality, 29.97fps. For size, I use HD 1080 and uncheck preserve aspect ratio (somehow that was key to preserving the aspect ratio ) Before I do all that I crop my image to 1920x1080.

I'll go ahead and give your solutions a try!

I just tried the Animation compressor, looks a bit better! Is there any downside to using this format for a real animation? The files are roughly the same size.

I attached a screenshot of your solution (Top), mine (Bottom), and the original JPEG (Right).

Still not quite there though, huh?

TheBeastman13 said:

I'm unsure if there is a downside to doing an "animation" QT.mov versus something else. I was just doing whatever I could to match my original footage. Can anyone else chime in on any cons of using "animation" as the compressor type?

I'm still confused as to why the color changes so drastically, so much loss of shadows and rich colors.

Have you tried color correcting the "animation" export? Boost the saturation?

Click to expand...

No I haven't, is the boost in saturation something I need to do as a filter in the video itself or is that something to do in the export? I didn't see any options for that sort of thing when I exported it.