Using Keynote Movies in Final Cut Pro

Since so many Keynote users on the Apple forums were having trouble getting movies from Keynote to Final Cut Pro, I thought I would post my findings. This page is in NTSC. If someone wants to e-mail me the PAL numbers, I'll post those.

NOTE: This page was created just after Keynote 1 was released. Most of the information (if not all) is still pertinent, but just keep in mind it hasn't been updated in a long time.

First, a bit about video resolutions
I am sure you have seen 720X480 all over the place. This is the standard NTSC digital video resolution. You've also probably seen 720X486, 640X480, 720X540 and even 720X534. Well, all of these resolutions are related. Here's a table with the breakdown of what they mean. We've included the PAL numbers for our international friends:

NTSC Resolution		Use
720X480		Consumer DV resolution
720X534		Used to create a DV file on a computer. Once it is "squished" to 720X480 it looks correct in the DV space without messing up the proportions
720X486		Pro DV resolution (called D1)
720X540		Used to create a D1 file on a computer. Once it is "squished" to 720X486 it looks correct in the D1 space without messing up the proportions
640X480		Another way to create a 720X480 DV file on a computer. Instead of being "squished" vertically it is "Stretched" horizontally to make 720X480.

PAL Resolution		Use
720X576		Consumer DV resolution
768X576		Used to create a DV file on a computer. Once it is "squished" to 720X576 it looks correct in the DV space without messing up the proportions
I got these numbers from Photoshop and I notice that the squish direction is vertical not horizontal, so be aware of that. If anyone has any more PAL numbers, feel free to e-mail them. I don't know much about PAL. I

You see, TV pixels are not square. 640X480 is the closest to the DV space because it appears the same as 720X480. On the Computer the 640X480 pixels are square. On a TV the 720X480 pixles are tall, making it appear to be 640X480. iDVD and iMovie use 640X480 as their import size to keep you from getting confused. Importing a 640X480 image will make it full screen. They will also take a 720X480 file, but if you create a still image at 720X480 it will look weird in the DV space. If you create an image file (or crop an existing one) to 720X534, and then squish it (unlock the proportions in your image editor) to 720X480, it will look weird on the computer, but fine on a TV or your video editor.

Now, on top of that, many people use the 720X540 resolution instead of 720X534. That difference of 6 pixels usually doesn't make a difference, so don't fret it, but the actual mathematical numbers lead to 720X534 when creating for DV. To make matters worse, if you export a Keynote file as a QuickTime movie, exporting as 720X534 will not give you the full movie since it's not a true 4:3 ratio like 720X540. Keynote expects you to use the 720X540 ratio if you want the whole movie and not something with black bars down the sides. It's a little crazy, but as I said before, if you use 720X540 on everything, you probably won't notice those 6 pixels.

What the heck is Overscan?
Now that you have a little knowledge of the DV format, lets talk about overscan. A normal TV never shows your entire video image. I think this started because no one made a TV that showed the entire tube, there was a front bezel that covered the edges. The problem you'll run into is that your pretty presentation will have a god chunk of the edges cut off when you view it on a TV. You have two choices. You can keep the presentation the size it is and use my Overscan Guide to at least see the safe zone inside Keynote, or you can shrink your video clip once you've got it inside Final Cut Pro. We'll cover that one later in this article.

What about Small Text?
Since video is not near the resolution of a computer, small text can really be a problem. Lots of little bullet points become almost unreadable on the TV screen. My suggestion if your final target is a TV is to make sure all your text is really big. Almost too big. I mean, it might even look weird on your screen it's so big. Break one slide into two if you need to. Don't use long paragraphs of text (hey, no one will read them anyway). This will make for a much better presentation on the TV screen, and people will actually stick around to read what's there.

What size should my actual show be?
This one is up for debate. Logical thinking would say 720X540 (remember you can't do 720X534 from Keynote correctly). This is the closest to real DV you can get without having to stretch the image out. But here's something interesting. I had BETTER results when I used a show that was 1024X768 and shrank it in Final Cut Pro. That's right, after learning all about video resolutions, I'm telling you that you can get away with breaking all the rules and just exporting the show at 1024X768 (or 800X600 if you used a show of that size). The text appeared sharper when I did this. I tested all kinds of sizes and filters (in FCP) and it still looked better to me starting with 1024X768. If you ARE going to use 720X540 I would suggest actually making your Keynote slides that size. It will take some major reworking of your slides if you change to this from one of the others, so most people aren't going to bother.

Okay, my presentation is ready, now what?
Okay, once you've prepped your show you can follow these steps to get your movie exported to a format that will look good in Final Cut Pro.

Choose Export from the Edit menu. Make sure QuickTime is selected and click the Next button.
Make sure Playback Control is set to Self-Playing Movie or things will be all messed up when you get into Final Cut Pro
Set your Slide Duration and Build Duration and make sure Repeat is set to none (you can loop it later). You can choose to include audio or not. I usually don't have any audio at this point because part of my reasoning for bringing it into Final Cut Pro is to add audio
Now, click on the Formats Pop-up and choose Custom. At this point a new window appears with some more advanced QuickTime settings
In the Video pop-up, make sure it is set to Full Size. Anything larger could look bad, anything smaller probably won't matter
Click the Settings Button
Choose Animation from the Top Pop-up menu (you could also try NONE if you want)
Set the Depth to Millions of Colors+
Set the Quality to Best
Set the Frames to 29.97 (DV frame rate) Leave the other settings blank
Click Okay, name your file and save it

I have tested exporting using the DV Stream, QuickTime DV file (slightly different than DV Stream), and several other formats. The steps above always gave me a pretty sharp image.

I'm not going to give you a tutorial on how to import into Final Cut Pro. If you don't know how to do that, you need to start learning FCP before playing with Keynote movies.

IMPORTANT
You may notice that your clip looks really lousy on your Mac screen. Don't worry, it's not as bad as it seems. If you can, try editing with your camcorder connected via firewire, and have a TV set connected to that. In Final Cut you lose your Real Time if you do this, but it will give oyu an idea of how it REALLY will look on a TV. In iMovie you have to change a setting in the preferences to let the video play through the camera. This is a good way to check your overscan, flickering and quality.

Resizing your Movie
Final Cut Pro SHOULD resize your movie to fit the screen as soon as you drop it on the Timeline. At this point you can choose to shrink it or enlarge it. You'll want to shrink your clip if you did NOT take in to account the Overscan problem mentioned earlier. You will also want to have your DV camcorder or DV converter connected to a TV so that while in Final Cut Pro, you can actually see what's getting cut off. Shrink the movie to the point that the edges are just barely out of your view on the TV, You don't want black edges showing around you movie if you can help it.

If you want to Enlarge your movie you can do that. It's already at less than 100%, so you can freely enlarge it without losing quality. You'll lose LOTS of information off the edges of the screen, but you are safe to do this if you want to.

Adjusting your movie with Filters
Upon import I noticed that there were two big problems with my Keynote movies. They were too bright, and they flickered like mad. Applying a Brightness and Contrast filter and then a Flicker Filter did the trick. Here are my settings:

Filter		Setting
Brightness/Contrast		Brightness -15 Contrast -60
Flicker Filter		Maximum

Feel free to mess with these settings. These are what worked for me. I had a slide with some fine lines on it, and they were lost completely until I dropped the brightness and contrast to these level. Also, play around with the three different Flicker Filter settings. You might find that certain movies don't need the maximum setting.

Adding the Finishing Touches
At this point you should render your clip and watch it on a TV just to make sure everything looks good. The first time i did this I decided to go BACK to Keynote and make all the fonts bigger. Time consuming, but the clip came out more readable that way.

Now that you have the clip in, and it's looking good you can add audio, layer other clips or text on top of it and generally treat it as any other movie. If you need to, you can use the razor blade tool to cut apart your clip and make the slide timings shorter, or cut and duplicate parts of it to make the slide timings longer. I suppose you could also slow down or speed up the transitions using the Speed setting of the clip, but it could possibly mess up your image.

Have fun
Have fun messing with your Keynote presentations in FCP. And don't forget to e-mail me if you find a better way of doing things, or a new technique not listed here.