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How do you edit larger resolutions in smaller res timelines?
I have a 720 project where I’m editing 1080 footage. I drop the foootage on the timeline and the scale percentage is 100%. The normal expectation is that it should be 66.67% since it’s a 1080p file in a 720p project. I understand that becaause of the spatial conform feature (set to fit), that any footage will read 100% when dropped in. So then my understanding is that if the project is 720, I should be able to blow the footage to 150% (yielding 1080) and have it still look good. I did that and the footage looks like something that was blown up 150%. It doesn’t have the crisp look that I’d expect.
I’ve tried resetting spatial conform to “None” yet the Scale % doesn’t change. At all three spatial conform settings, the 1080p footage in this 720p project reads 100%.
What am I missing? How can one edit a larger resolution file in a smaller resolution project and get it to work as expected.
Ron Dawson
Executive Producer/President
Dare Dreamer MediaCreating films that inspire and encourage the human spirit.
*** Dream Out Loud ***
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7 Replies
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You are right, when spatial conform is none you should be able to zoom in.
Is the timline definitely 720? Drop a 720 clip on first. Maybe it was set to adjust to the first clip and that was 1080??!! That would be my guess. -
That’s what I thought. The project was originally 1080, but then I changed the settings to 720.
Ron Dawson
Executive Producer/President
Dare Dreamer MediaCreating films that inspire and encourage the human spirit.
*** Dream Out Loud ***
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I noticed the same thing, and mailed to Apple about it. I suggest you do the same.
That being said, have you rendered out already to test how it looks?
I remember when having a problem like that, the rendered out version looked fine, so I think FCP X WAS taking from the original source size, and not making it smaller and uprezzing it again.
I should check again if it worked indeed so.The thing is: it’s pretty non-intuïtive in this way because, as you said, the clip says 100 procent, and you don’t have an IDEA anymore as editor of how the software is working with the footage.
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Thanks for your reply Mathieu. I too had thought that once rendered it would be okay, but that isn’t the case. Even the rendered version looks “softer” than it should.
I’m wondering if it’s a bug that setting Spatial Conform to “None” is not resetting the scale percentage to reflect the actual size of the clip relative to the project properties?
Ron Dawson
Executive Producer/President
Dare Dreamer MediaCreating films that inspire and encourage the human spirit.
*** Dream Out Loud ***
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So, I think I discovered the issue. It’s format related. I dropped some 1080 animation codec clips into the 720 timeline, and when I changed spacial conform to “None” (with Scale at 100%), they grew in size to overfill the screen. When I set their scale to 66.67%, they fit the screen perfectly.
So, I imported some 1080 ProRes LT footage from another project into this project and voila, when spatial conform was set to “none,” (and the scale at 100%) the clip grew beyond the size of the project boundaries. It would appear that FCPX has an issue with raw h.264 files as far as spatial conform is concerned.
At least I know I’m not going crazy. 🙂
Ron Dawson
Executive Producer/President
Dare Dreamer MediaCreating films that inspire and encourage the human spirit.
*** Dream Out Loud ***
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So, I think I discovered the issue. It’s synchronized clips!
I dropped some 1080 animation codec clips into the 720 timeline, and when I changed spacial conform to “None” (with Scale at 100%), they grew in size to overfill the screen. When I set their scale to 66.67%, they fit the screen perfectly.
So, I imported some 1080 ProRes LT footage from another project into this project and voila, when spatial conform was set to “none,” (and the scale at 100%) the clip grew beyond the size of the project boundaries.
So I thought it was an h.264 issue. So I transcoded the used project clips to ProRes422 and the timeline was still not adjusting. But I’m working with synchronized clips. So on a whim I dropped one of the original 1080 h.264 clips (non-synchronized) and it worked as expected.
So it was the Spatial Conform of the synchronized clips not working correctly when dropped in the timeline.
At least I know I’m not going crazy. 🙂
Ron Dawson
Executive Producer/President
Dare Dreamer MediaCreating films that inspire and encourage the human spirit.
*** Dream Out Loud ***
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Feedback to Apple, sounds like a bug!
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