OT:Soft focus issue with FX7 - help

kunal wrote on 9/17/2009, 8:12 PM
I just got my FX7 yesterday and took some footage today evening. I was shooting a freeway during rush hour. The camera was static on a tripod. I had it set to auto focus. I did see that the AF would get thrown off sometimes when a huge truck came into the view but it would get back into focus as soon as the truck was out of the shot. Or so it seemed.

While looking at the footage on my PC, I see that all footage is a little out of focus. I'm not sure if this is because I was at the longer end of the lens (not sure how far because there are no markers on the zoom ring, but almost 80% of the way). Would this cause the out-of-focus issue?

Or was it because of the motion of the vehicles and the AF being unable to focus sharply? Should I be using MF in such situations?

Thanks for any help!
Kunal

Comments

fldave wrote on 9/17/2009, 8:46 PM
Manual focus.

It is probably constantly trying to focus on rapidly moving objects. Doesn't work very well
kunal wrote on 9/17/2009, 10:04 PM
If I play the footage from the tape to my projector over the component video cable, there's no soft focus issue though.

I set project properties to:
HDV 1080-60i (1440x1080), 29.97fps
Field order: Upper field first
PAR: 1.333 (HDV 1080)

Deinterlace method - blend fields.

and then capture as HDV

Are these settings right?
kunal wrote on 9/17/2009, 10:42 PM
I just observed that it only appears out of focus when I play it on the timeline. If I render it (as an avi, as a test example), it's in focus.

Any idea why the focus goes soft in the timeline?
ushere wrote on 9/17/2009, 11:06 PM
depends what your preview is set to.....

you give no sys specs, so anything else is guesswork..
kunal wrote on 9/17/2009, 11:46 PM
I have a core i7 & 32-bit XP with 3GB of RAM.

When you say "depends on what preview is set to", what preview parameters are you referring to?
Grazie wrote on 9/18/2009, 12:43 AM
On the Preview Toolbar there is a range of Preview "qualities". The better the quality of PREVIEW the slower the PREVIEW framerate.

So, what I do is pick the best fps I can get to view the best quality. Now sometimes that means I need to set Preview to "Preview (AUTO)" quality setting and other times I can get away with "Good > Full", and so on.

Now in VP9 there is an override to all this, "Adjust Size and Quality for Optimal Playback", that intelligently selects the "best" frame rate for a "quality" at that time. And of course you can also manual DESELECT this option and revert back to setting all this manually.

Now for you, you MAY have the "Adjust Size and Quality for Optimal Playback" engaged and it is therefore continually giving GOOD frame rate, BUT less than spectacular VISUAL quality.

HTH

Grazie
Grazie wrote on 9/18/2009, 12:48 AM
. .and as a rider to all this, is that when you DO come to Render, all the Preview options are blown away and you render according to your Render template, which is mostly set to GOOD. Hence a better post render than what you are seeing on your timeline.


However, awkward blokes like me could ALSO set render to a "Preview" quality IF I should need to get a fast render out. I also need to reset OR use a BEST/GOOD render quality afterwards!

Grazie
kunal wrote on 9/18/2009, 7:33 AM
Thanks Grazie! Changing the preview quality to good->full fixed the focus issue

When you're talking about render quality settings, you are referring to the "full-resolution rendering quality" setting in the "project properties", right?
Grazie wrote on 9/18/2009, 7:52 AM
Changing the preview quality to good->full

Erm . . it is a Feature of Vegas? I wouldn't call it an "issue"?

When you're talking about render quality settings, you are referring to the "full-resolution rendering quality" setting in the "project properties", right?

Well, no, no I wasn't ???? . . I distinctly remember "seeing" an option for Draft thru to Best . . and now it IS on that Project Tab! Thank you for jolting me!!! Now, has this been about for like yonks???

Grazie