Photomontage Hell

[mxlplx]

:evil: :evil: :evil:

I've been up all freakin' night working on a 1 song photomontage that should only take 2 hours at the most. Every picture has motion and a transition between.

I use two tracks so that the motion does not stop during the transition, so still picture clips overlap.

Here is my process.

- move the picture in canvas to set where my first frame will be.
- create a key frame on the first frame of the still.
- press down arrow to go to next edit point (still)
- press back arrow to go to last frame of previous still (The one I want)
- set a key frame on last frame
- move the picture in canvas to set where my last frame will be.

In FCP 4, this was rather simple and worked like a charm. In FCP 5, I get random jumps throughout. Yes, I render it all out. Right in the middle of the timeline, in will play nicely and then a 1 frame jump, that's rather startling, happens. I go look at that picture and there is NOTHING unusual about it. Have to recreate the motion. It happens ALOT and I can't find a solution other than getting FC4 back out.

I'm getting very frustrated!

I saw that Ratvega said to increase still cache on another board. Alas, I have done so but it hasn't helped.

Any ideas?

[MediaConcepts]

I recall hearing about this same problem on a different forum. The suggestion was to zoom in on your keyframes to make sure that the only keyframes are at the start and end of the clip, no unwanted ones anywhere else. Also check to see if "easy ease" if checked. Not sure if that's the righ name, that's what it's called in AE.

Joe

[mxlplx]

I recall hearing about this same problem on a different forum. The suggestion was to zoom in on your keyframes to make sure that the only keyframes are at the start and end of the clip, no unwanted ones anywhere else.

Joe

Thanks Joe. I definately tried that. It's just so random!!!

Eric

[RatVega]

:evil: :evil: :evil:

I've been up all freakin' night working on a 1 song photomontage that should only take 2 hours at the most. Every picture has motion and a transition between.

I use two tracks so that the motion does not stop during the transition, so still picture clips overlap.

Here is my process.

- move the picture in canvas to set where my first frame will be.
- create a key frame on the first frame of the still.
- press down arrow to go to next edit point (still)
- press back arrow to go to last frame of previous still (The one I want)
- set a key frame on last frame
- move the picture in canvas to set where my last frame will be.
This is pretty much the textbook way, I could only add using Shift I and Shift O (while in Viewer) to locate the In and Out on the still.

In FCP 4, this was rather simple and worked like a charm. In FCP 5, I get random jumps throughout. Yes, I render it all out. Right in the middle of the timeline, in will play nicely and then a 1 frame jump, that's rather startling, happens. I go look at that picture and there is NOTHING unusual about it. Have to recreate the motion. It happens ALOT and I can't find a solution other than getting FC4 back out.
This sounds like maybe you're dropping frames during playback... One playback issue I found is that even a single audio track seems to benefit from mixdown. Go figure.
I know you (specifically) have a fast G5, so it's not the Mac... there's a possibility of it being a overly full disk or something like that. For fun, toss the render files and re-render the entire sequence. I've seen times when the render files got strewn around and the system seemed to have a problem gathering them in time.

I'm getting very frustrated!

I saw that Ratvega said to increase still cache on another board. Alas, I have done so but it hasn't helped.
The need for an increased cash has more to do with timeline display than rendered playback. It's a way to keep they system peppy on a long (unrendered) timeline as you're cutting. I don't think it's a player here.

Any ideas?
One elegant solution is to build it in Motion. This has a slight learning curve and an addiction problem... Once you see the fluidity of Motion you won't go back. :grin:
Look for me on iChat, I'll help troubleshoot.

[mxlplx]

Joe and Rat,

Took me a while to figure it out, but here is the deal. If you go to SEQUENCE>SETTINGS>VIDEO PROCESSING [tab]>MOTION FILTERING QUALITY. Mine was set to Normal. I changed it to BEST and all seems to be well. I'll keep you informed in the next couple of montages to see if this works 100 percent. Thanks for being there for me just to vent :)

E