default camera size issue...

Hello,

Well, me and my friend have started the second episode of our cartoon. The first one is on its way to be re-done (audio only). See, we’ve networked his mac and my pc together… I send him the full animation movie, with dialoge only, and he edits sound and film effects… great! BUT WAIT?! we’ve noticed with our first episode that Final Cut Pro is having trouble exporting it all in good quality. At first we thought it was the file type we were using, but .MOV is still the best quality (super huge file size, any suggestions?)… We’ve started to wonder if the reason its blurring our movie is because it can’t understand toonboom’s default camera size (which for me has always been 500 x 375).

Now maybe i’ve skipped one important step… but does anyone agree that I should change the default camera size to something like 720 x 480?

I’ll try that tonight, but if anyone reads this… your input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Most important, keep your files as uncompressed as long as possible.
The better the quality (the least compression) the better the outcome.
Do your final compression after you have done your editing in Final Cut.
The more you use compression on the way the worse the final outcome will be.

If you use the Apple “Animation” codec , that’s fairly good for importing into FC.

I suggest use the TBS preset for DV-NTSC (720x540)
and use the same preset in FC (720x480 - standard NTSC digital video resolution).

The difference relates to the aspect ratio field, meaning that if you encode at 720x540,
FC will reduce it to its 4:3 aspect ratio of 720x480 automatically.
(It’s just the difference between square- (computer) and non-square-pixels (TV).

Cheers
Nolan