This is a common question and there are several answers:
First, the Final Cut Pro Canvas usually shows titles and graphics more pixelated and lower quality than the actual quality. Render a title and play it on a real monitor - or render and export a 10 frame test to disk and view to see the true picture.
Read these articles on monitoring: http://www.dvcreators.net/tag/monitoring/ for more info.
If you are rendering to the DV codec, you will see an instant drop in quality. But don’t worry, as long as you export to a lossless codec your final project will look great.
This article …
Ever since the release of our DV Enlightenment lighting course, people are always asking us, “How did you make those awesome light rays on your titles?”
In that case, we used an excellent plugin for After Effects called Shine. Shine worked for a bit in Final Cut Pro years back, but then Apple changed the plugin API, and Shine no longer worked in Final Cut. (It works now, however!)
I’ve always liked the super-dramatic light rays effect, but the light rays filters in Motion and Final Cut Pro take too long to render… and frankly, …
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Have you ever found yourself changing the file names of a whole folder of clips, graphic or other files on your hard drive one by one? Here is a Warp Speed Workflow showing how to change hundred of files names in one click.
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Click here to ask a question about Final Cut Pro workflows.
For more info, check out:
Final Cut Pro Foundations
Final Cut Express Foundations
A frequently asked question by new Final Cut users is about creating titles and not being able to see changes as they make them. This movie shows how to see changes while editing your title, all in real-time! Wa-Hoo!
Click here to ask a question about Final Cut Pro.
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ArtRage is a painting package designed to provide a realistic and fun simulation of using paint on a canvas, along with pens, pencils, crayons, and other tools. ArtRage is available for both Windows and Mac OS X. It can be used with a mouse, but works better if you have a graphics tablet, or even better on a Tablet PC where ArtRage takes advantage of the unique interaction of pen and screen to produce a realistic painting feel.
Windows-only free app:
Gloodle is "doodle with globs" — drawing using 3D shapes to create 2D images with a lot of richness, complexity, and depth.
Gloodle is a simple app that shows some hint of the immediate feedback that makes particleIllusion so fun and useable: in Gloodle you just draw on the window and cool things happen. Not much thinking required. There are plenty of controls to experiment with, and (like particleIllusion) a lot of power hidden under simple controls.
Gloodle is now available for free!…
Photoshop is the old standby, but I don’t like it for video graphics. Someone as simple as grabbing an element and moving it is problematic. I much prefer FireWorks, or even Motion for still graphics, which has some nice layout functions.
Flash is also an option for "PowerPoint" type slides, as well as Keynote.
GIMP is a free, open source graphics program very similar to Photoshop. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It …
Features:
* Deinterlace movies (half height/normal height/double frame rate/blend,adaptive/simple). * Change field dominance (for PAL films with fake interlace). * Reinterlace from one or two movies. * Standards conversion (PAL< ->NTSC or custom). * Inverse telecine. * Trim, shift, simple color correction, noise reduction. * Change encoding (RGB gamma, video range/full range). * Fix jagged edges. * Pitch preserving sound track for half speed. * Change movie speed, reverse movie. * Interlaced in/out, progressive in/out. * Includes utility to view and edit image description extensions * Separate utility for NTSC->PAL inverse telecine
to download, click here
I have not tried this… post …
To use still images in a Final Cut timeline, use one of the following formats:
- TIFF
- PICT (uncompressed)
- PNG
- .PSD RGB (NOT CMYK)
For 100% size, use 72 dpi. 24 bit color (or 32 with Alpha channel) looks the best.
Save your original Photoshop or Fireworks file, then “Merge Down” (to rasterize layer effects like glows and drop shadows, FCP will not import those).
Finally, resize your images to the right dimensions:
DV NTSC 720 x 480 (non-square pixels)
DV PAL 720 x 576 (non-square pixels)
1080i HD 1920 x 1080 (square pixels)
720p HD 1280 x 720 (square pixels)
Then save under a different name and import into FCP.
STILL IMAGE ZOOMS …
When moving footage is not available, don’t forget about still photos! You can animate still photos with motion and scale, crop them, apply filters (like sepia, B & W, color tint) and sometimes stills can fill empty spots in your timeline as well or even better than a video clip. Also, many stock photos are automatically HD res!
http://tutorialblog.org/25-places-to-find-awesome-stock-photos-%E2%80%94-free-and-cheap/
Here is a monster list of sites with free photos:
Wikipedia Commons
Stock Exchange
Morguefile
Image After
Free Photos Bank
OpenPhoto
BigFoto
USDA
NASA
NOAA
NPS…
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