300 or 600 DPI?
 

I'm scanning some images out of a magazine for a project I'm working on and I'm wondering if I should scan them in at 300dpi or 600dpi. The project is being done in FCP (ProRes442 / HD / 1920x1080) and I want to be able to zoom in on the pictures if need be, which would be best?

Hey Oliver, 300dpi should be plenty if you want to do some ken burns or just reposition. 600dpi might be overkill, but if you want to be safe, go ahead.

2550x3300px for 8.5x11 at 300dpi

Great, thanks David.

And a .TIF file will be OK? There is no option for a targa or tga file.

Remember that FCP can't handle anything over 4000 x 4000 pixels.

Remember that FCP can't handle anything over 4000 x 4000 pixels.

Errata:

Just did some quick research. This is only KIND OF true. <sigh> DO a Google search for FCP 4000 pixels and you'll see where I messed up. Or don't. That works too.

I do tons of photo "shows" in FCP and 600 is overkill and will slow your machine down immensely. Typically I use 300 dpi and 1080 pixels as the width. HD vid is still 72dpi so even 150 dpi photo at 1920x1080 will allow you to double the size in FCP.

So 300 dpi 1920x1080 will show up in the scale section of the motion tab as roughly 25% allowing you to quadruple the size and keep the max resolution.

Also, there's no reason to use tif, jpgs work just fine.

Since you're taking it from a magazine, make sure to run the denoise type filters (I think it's despeckle) you have available in PS or similar to get rid of the inkjet dots before you bring them in to FCP.

Robert, the project will be blown up for a short theatrical release at film festivals. The end result will be HDCAM and Blu-ray. Do you still think 300dpi for the pictures is OK for this?

I use a Mac Pro Dual-Core 2.66 with 16GB of ram, do you think 600 dpi pictures will really slow me down? All my footage is ProRes and I don't have any lag so far but I haven't tried dropping any high resolution pictures in yet to check the work flow.

Thanks for your help on this!
O.D.

300 will absolutely work. As long as you don't blow the pic up above 100% in FCP, it will look great. And remember the math...a 1920x1080 pic at 300dpi will show around 25% scale to fill the full HD window in FCP. That give you a LOT of room to move and scale.

As for the machine lag, I may have added that prematurely. The pieces I have done are anywhere from 10-20 minutes long and about 90-100% photos. I have an 8-core 2.66 with 16 gig RAM as well and it used to bog when I used 600dpi pics but I'm talking about hundreds of photos. I did one with over 900 pics and even at 300dpi it started to choke.

You won't have any lag with video as long as your sequence setting matches the clip setting.

Contrary to popular belief, video DOESN'T HAVE a dpi. It's pixel count is absolute and doesn't reference a physical size, like print does.

understood BUT when referencing FCP and how it deals with photos vs video, it's an accurate way to measure how FCP's scaling works. :)

Oliver,

It's not the DPI settings that matters, it's the physical *pixel* dimensions of the file itself.

Keep in mind that "dpi" represents "dots per inch" which is strictly for the CMYK commercial screen-printing process where an image gets translated into microscopic dots that are sprayed through a screen. Video is not made up of dots, but PIXELS.

Pre-scale or pre-size your still images for no more than 72dpi and with a pixel dimension that is at a minimum of 125% larger than the frame size of your timeline. For example, if you're editing in 1280 x 720 frame size then your stills should be a minimum of about 1400 x 900 to allow for zooming. If you're going to zoom in a lot, say beyond 200% then the pixel dimensions need to be larger, NOT the dpi setting.

Also, PNG's seem to do better with any motion applied to them especially in HDV or any long-GOP format timeline.

Hope this helps.

A 150 dpi photo at 1920x1080 is exactly the same size as a 72 dpi photo at 1920x1080 or a 100000000 dpi photo at 1920x1080.
They all have 1920x1080...


You should only think about dpi whan you think Cm or Inches. Not pixels.

please remember the context these statements are being made in.
The sizes are NOT the same (in the correct context) as the pixel density is different.

Here's your test.... in Photoshop make two pics 1920x1080 as the document size and set one to 150 and the other to 72. Pull them into FCP and you will see what the original context of this thread is about.

Oliver asked the right question, because he was talking about scanning physical images (Cm... Inches...).
a 6x4 photo will have 1800px x 1200px at 300dpi and 3600px x 2400px at 600dpi.

On the other hand, you can print a 1920px x 1080px image with 6.4 Inches x 3.6 Inches at 300dpi or 3.2 Inches x 1.8 Inches at 600 dpi.

So, how this translates to video???

Final Cut (and every NLE) will only see absolute pixels. Never pixel density.

But there's no mention in the original post about what size the picture being scanned is. Is is 4x6? 8x10? 35mm slide? Without knowing that, recommending DPI is senseless.

And it's video, DPI is meaningless, anyway. (See numerous comments by others above)