Greetings. I thought I had mastered a workflow where I captured at a large size (full screen on a 23" Apple Cinema Display) that I would then edit in FCP at a more reasonable 720x480 (give or take) so I could zoom in for closeups and animate to other areas of the screen. For an example (1 minute) of what I was successfully doing see #27 (exporting to widescreen) here:

http://www.eusd4kids.org/edtech/project_live.html#fcp

For the problem, see #29 (Animation: the Movie) at the same location. About 45 seconds in you can see multiple cursors drawn on the screen. If you finish the movie (about 5 min total) there are other places that had the same problem.

Both movies were done on the same machine (Mac Pro 2 X 2.66 GHz; 5 GB RAM; 23" and 20' ACD; Mac OS 10.4.11; QuickTime 7.4 (this may be the culprit); FCP 6.2; SnapzPro 2.1.2). I think it's really important to be able to zoom in and out (as here) rather than looking at a static screen. Anybody else doing this kind of work? Any suggestions on what the problem may be?

Hello-
Are the duplicate cursors in the movie captured by Snapz Pro X?

Is this the only movie that has multiple cursors?

Anything unusual or different about that movie, either during capture or the render in FCP?

If I open the original snapz movie in QuickTime player it's perfect, so somehow FCP is at fault I guess. Again, I've used this workflow with excellent results in the past (see the first link referenced above). I've found it very powerful to stay within the Animation codec and be able to zoom in or out in a controlled way (the Universal Access zoom is great to view something static, but not for action). This work flow also allows for better control of the audio track, as it doesn't have to be recorded simultaneously. It does require a lot of rendering, but for the short form videos I'm making it's not a big deal. Not sure what has changed to make this happen; QT 7.4? It may also be related to the way FCP always sees a snapz movie as 10 fps, regardless of what was chosen in snapz (although, come to think of it, the "perfect" movie playing in QT Player says in the Movie Properties 11 fps (or similar), not the 30 fps chosen in snapz). I know there are a lot of people who would love a reliable FCP editing workflow that ends with a movie that looks as good as originally recorded in snapz. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Frank,

I would guess that this is a bug in FCP relating to the fact that the Animation codec has a variable framerate. AFAIK this is the only QuickTime codec that supports this, and it's quite old to boot, and not commonly used by most video editors, so a bug in FCP wouldn't surprise me at all. You should file a bug report with Apple at http://bugreporter.apple.com and see if they fix it

If you're using FCP6 I would also suggest using QuickTime to first convert the video produced by Snapz to a format like ProRes 422 (HQ) before importing it into FCP. That codec will generate a large video but you should see very very little or no quality loss whatsoever in your video

What are your output settings from Snapz Pro, specifically the keyframe setting. You have to set it to keyframe every frame! or take your variable framerate QT and render it in After Effects. The filesize (using animation codec) will be a lot larger than the Snapz Pro output as your new QT will be a constant 24fps or 25fps etc.

Also, when using ProRes(HQ) are you finding the quality shows up as Medium? is there a way of making it HQ?