Poor Video Quality from Final Cut Export of Stills in Motion

[Jeff Bonta]

Using my iMac G5 and Final Cut Express, I have imported photos and set them to motion with a simple 100% to 95% scaling (e.g. Ken Burns effect). I then export them as a Quicktime Movie. The result is a video that seems to have this appearance of rippling water throughout each scene that is in motion. That is a nice effect for a scene with water in it, but looks really bad when a mountain is rippling.

I went to the Apple store and created the same problem on their computers using both Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro. None of the workers in the store could figure out why this is happening.

If I do the same exercise with iMovie and the Ken Burns effect, there is no problem.

I have tried full resolution photos and NTSC resolution. Full resolution is worse, but NTSC resolution is still very bad.

Has anyone seen this? Any ideas how to fix this?

 

[TheMonarch]

Before I go on, what format did you export in?

 

[Jeff Bonta]

In Final Cut Express, I used Quicktime Movie as the export type

 

[Lacero]

You have to de-interlace the footage to prevent the rippling effect. Final Cut has an de-interlace filter in the video effects menu, or you can open the still in a program such as Photoshop to do the deinterlacing there.

 

[TheMonarch]

In Final Cut Express, I used Quicktime Movie as the export type

Click Apple+I while the movie is playing (In Quicktime) and post all the details about the movie.

 

[Jeff Bonta]

That seems to help quite a bit. It still has some of the rippling effect, but it is more tolerable. I did the de-interlacing with the Final Cut filter. I have not tried the de-interlacing with PhotoShop. I need to try the PhotoShop approach later because I have the same problem with the application called "Still Life", but Still Life does not have a de-interlace feature.

Thanks. If you have any other comments, I will be watching.

 

[MovieCutter]

Video is not going to give you solid stills in the first place. Unless you're working with HD, decent stills from DV video are very difficult to obtain because of interlace, artifacting, and the quality of the camera's chip. So don't feel bad, you're not doing anything wrong.

 

[Jeff Bonta]

Ok, so the de-interlacing seems to help. But why does iMovie not have a problem. Does anyone know if iMovie automatically does de-interlacing?