Importing still images into 16:9 anamorphic timeline
 

I'm importing a digital still image 720x480 @ 300dpi of a building that has strong diagonal roof lines in FCP5. The project is formatted to DV 48k anamorphic.

The diagonal lines are horribly jagged. in the Canvas, but the same image in the viewer is pristine.

What am I doing wrong?

If you import at 720x480 still image into an anamorphic timeline it will get stretched out of proportion. Does the image look correct in Photoshop on your monitor? When you drop it into FCP in a 16:9 sequence it will effectively be stretched to 852x480 since DV pixels aren't square like computer monitor pixels.

There are various approaches, but what I would do is crop the image to the 16:9 aspect ratio first in Photoshop. So for an image 720 pixels wide the height would be 720 x 9 / 16 = 405 pixels. But you could crop it to any size as needed to fit the composition as long as the width = height x 1.78. After you've done that, resize the image to 720x480 without constraining the proportions. This will insure that the final image is the correct proportions in FCP.

As for the flickering, you could apply a slight blur, deinterlace or use a plug-in like Joes' Field Blender and see if that helps.

Thank You.