FCP Question (urgent, please help!) - stuttering pans on stills

[Dominic Jones]

Hi all,

I posted this question on DVXUser as well, so apologies to those who frequent both, but I'm really up against it for time, so I thought I'd post here too...

Here's the deal (copy and paste from DVXUser post):

Hi there, hope someone can help me out here...

I'm not overly familiar with FCP (I usually use Avid), but I've got to recut a feature doc on FCP as that's what the previous editors used (and I don't have the time, or the patience, for that matter(!) to Auto Duck them over to Avid).

Getting on fine for the most part (I have used it for promos before), but there are several pan 'n' scanned/rostrum effected stills in the movie, and a fair few of them are stuttering fairly severely - is this a known issue?? My guess it that it's a fields issue, but I'm not sure. Tried adding motion blur at various levels but to no avail.

Weirdly, it doesn't seem to be present on some TV's (and is not apparent on the FCP monitors, which is what's causing me to think it's fields related). On several TV's it's been a severe issue. All the TV's I'm using for viewing are standard PAL interlaced CRTs (some 4:3, some 16:9 - although this seems to have no bearing on the issue). I'm also playing the DVD's through different DVD players on each TV - could this be a factor?

I'm outputing de-interlaced from DV PAL source to Mpeg2 DVD (I'll also be going to Digibeta master finally, but I'm presuming it's not an Mpeg2 or DV25 codec issue and therefore the problem will persist if left - feel free to correct me if I'm wrong!).

I'm a bit stumped! Any ideas/solutions/suggestions gratefully received - it goes to master in 5 days, so please save my bacon!!

Thanks guys!....

[Matt Trubac]

you can check your field order settings by going to

Sequence > Settings

you have to have the correct sequence selected in the browser window or the timeline.

You can also check the field order of each clip in the browser. With the browser in list view scroll over to the field dominance column. Make sure the field dominance of each clip matches your sequence.. and the native field order of the format you are using... If you are using PAL DV I believe the correct field dominance is upper field first.

[Dominic Jones]

Thanks Matt - I'll check everything matches... Bit of a steep learning curve for the time available, very grateful for the guidance!

FYI, field order for PAL DV is Even/Lower field first...

Thanks again mate!

[Matt Trubac]

Dominic..

i got my 'upper field' first info from fxguide.com, and thought i had read before that DV Pal was upper field. I have never worked with pal so I really have no personal experience. Digging deeper I found that there was an error in the info on fxguide, and the same info was also posted to some other sites like the cow. The info has been fixed on some sites but not all.. bottom line though.. DV Pal is actually lower field.. so thanks!! I learned something new today!

if you have any further questions with FCP just post back and I will do my best, and I'm sure the others who hang around here will help too.