Urgent: HD Sequence in Final Cut Pro

[cwright]

OK... I am working on a photo montage video for this weekend, and I decided to build this one in high definition, just to see how it looks and to have a good sample.

I scanned all the photos at 800dpi to make sure I had plenty of resolution to work with, and set up a 1080i sequence in FCP to start building it. And it's moving VERY slow... 🙁 FCP is very unresponsive and sluggish, and it's telling me that it will take an hour to render just 6 keyframed photos! I've always been told that the G5s could easily work with HD content... I didn't think photos would be any different.

Now I am able to finish the project, but I would like to know if theres anything I can do (tweak settings, maybe?) to speed up the workflow? I'm working on a Dual 2.0ghz G5 with 4GB RAM...

Thanks!

 

[LethalWolfe]

1. What are your project settings? Did you set up an HDV, DVCPROHD, or uncompressed HD project?

2. What size are the images you are working with (i.e. xxxx*xxxx)?

1920*1080 is as big as you need the pictures to be. If you want to zoom into a picture then you need to make the pictures a little bit bigger.

If you are planning on doing a lot of moves and/or effects you might want to make a 720p HD project as well and do some tests to see which looks better (720p or 1080i). A progressive setup might make the effects/moves look better because there won't be any interlace artifacts.


Lethal

EDIT: Stupid question time. How do you plan on showing the finished project? If you are just going to make a standard def DVD there is no point in working in an HD project.

 

[cwright]

The project is a DVCPRO HD sequence, I didn't see HDV as an option.

The images I'm using are anywhere from 1608x2482 to 7520x6064 depending on the physical size of the scanned image, and yes I'm making them zoom in/out. I kept it consistent at 800dpi just in case, although it was probably overkill. 600dpi probably would have been plenty.

I just decided to make it in HD for myself, really... so I could have an HD sample piece to show clients. I know the DVD would be downsized for now, but later when HD-DVD comes around I could burn a new one. Plus what I have done so far looks kickass at full resolution on my Dell 2405FPW. 🙂

I haven't noticed any interlace artifacts yet, but I'll just experiment with 720p next time, since I've got too much finished in 1080i to change anything.

 

[asuidrok]

Other Options...

If you are just doing a photo slideshow you could always just export it from iPhoto...That would get you a HD .mov file very quickly, then just import that into FC to add titles, etc.

As Lethal said, if you aren't zooming, your best bet would be to scale the images to fit. You can do this really quickly if you have Photoshop by creating a new action and automating it. (it will automatically apply the action to all the images in a folder)

Final Cut really likes to the media to be in the same format as the sequence...like frame size and pixel aspect...At least it seems to make things flow MUCH MUCH faster when that is the case.

 

[cwright]

Yea I've used iPhoto before, but I don't really care for it. I much prefer to set the start/stop points in FCP where I have more control over it. iPhoto's not smart enough to know where the subject in the photo is, so you often get heads cut off.

 

[LethalWolfe]

The images I'm using are anywhere from 1608x2482 to 7520x6064 depending on the physical size of the scanned image, and yes I'm making them zoom in/out.

Yeah, w-a-y t-o-o b-i-g image files. Again, zooming aside, anything beyond 1920*1080 is just a waste because the additional pixels can't be displayed, but you are still asking FCP to manipulate them. It's like asking a chef to fix enough food for 30 people even though there are only 10 customers.

Just as an aside, when films are scanned in for color or effects work they usually either come in at 2048x1536 (aka "2K") or 4096x3072 (aka "4k"). So, um, I think you went a bit overboard. 😉


Lethal

 

[cwright]

Yea I guess they were way too big 😱

I went back to Photoshop and cut the resolution of all the images in half, and re-imported them to FCP. After that everything was a little more responsive. The rendering is still somewhat slow, but it's much better now.

Thanks 🙂

 

[ChrisFromCanada]

Toast 7 also ships with a product called Motion Pictures HD. It has more controls than iPhoto, but should give you a rendered preview much faster than FCP.