what is ideal size for still jpegs in FCP?

[Trent Watts]

i have a client who is going to give me still images to put into final cut. he is asking me what resolution he should use. he says they are in 760 by 486 right now. also, he has his stills at 72dpi resolution. does 300dpi make much of a difference or no? im editing from mini-dv. (also, i was searching for threads relating to this, but couldnt find any. if anyone knows of some, could they paste them in?)

[Kevin Randolph]

If you're not planning on doing any "Ken Burns" effect with them then you'll be fine with the image size that the files are now. If you plan to do any zooming or movement then try to get the files as big as available.

HTH...

[Boyd Ostroff]

720x480 is the native size for DV, however the pixels are not square. A computer monitor has square pixels, so an example of a correctly proportioned 4:3 image would be 1024x768 or 800x600 or 720x540 or 640x480 (or any other size where the width is 1.33x the height).

If you're using still images they should be in that 4:3 proportion to start with. Then you can drop them into FCP and it will scale them to fit. However, my experience is that FCP doesn't do a very clean job of scaling images. If you have Photoshop or a similar program, take your original image (1024x768 for example) and resize it to 720x480, then drop it into FCP.

72 dpi would be correct for what you want (although probably irrelevant since the pixel dimensions are what you're really interested in).

[Gene Crucean]

Originally Posted by Boyd Ostroff

72 dpi would be correct for what you want (although probably irrelevant since the pixel dimensions are what you're really interested in).

Correctamundo. DPI is only relevant if you are printing.

For eg. if your destination is a computer monitor, you could have a file that's 1920x1080 - 3000dpi and a file that's 1920x1080 - 72dpi and both will work perfectly not to mention the file size will be identical.

[Don Blish]

Originally Posted by Boyd Ostroff

If you're using still images they should be in that 4:3 proportion to start with. Then you can drop them into FCP and it will scale them to fit. However, my experience is that FCP doesn't do a very clean job of scaling images. If you have Photoshop or a similar program, take your original image (1024x768 for example) and resize it to 720x480, then drop it into FCP.

As long as you are in camera-native square pixel mode you must keep the crop 4:3 (ie 480x640 etc.) That "image crop" to resize to 720x480 must be "unconstrained", then, select "pixel aspect ratio" and then select "D1/DV NTSC (0.9)".

For widescreen you would crop your square pixel photo to 16:9 proportions (DV: 480x853 HDV: 1080x1920). Then "Image size" it, "unconstrained" as needed, (DV: 480x720 or HDV: 1080x1440), then reset pixel aspect ratio as appropriate. Many editing programs work fastest with photos in just the right size so no previewing is needed.