-
FCPX glitchy renders — causes, severity, workarounds?
Here’s a sincere FCPX or Not question.
I have a project coming up that may be a great candidate for a published Motion rig identity set, but I am worried about recommending this approach and then getting hit with the glitch frames on output bug.
What’s the nature of the glitchy render problem? Can it affect published Motion rigs? Does it affect built-in effects, or only third-party effects? Either way, are they any known-safe or known-risky effects?
What’s the best approach for dealing with the bug if it does bite?
Many thanks for all input.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
18 Replies
-
The only glitchy renders I have seen is using the Pomfort filter to do a log to 709 color transform.
This also happened in FCP7.
What footage are you going to be using?
-
Seems to be a variety of third party filters, including MB Looks, Pomfort and Tonalizer. Workaround is to render 8-bit uncompressed or export via Send To Compressor. It’s an Apple problem according to all developer comments. It looks like Motion templates that stick to an Apple workflow (no hacks under the hood) are OK.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
I still can’t figure out what you mean by “Render 8 bit compressed”. Where is that an option?
Unfortunately, Send to Compressor doesn’t work for me. Compressor Freezes as soon as I drop a setting on it.
-
I avoid rendering in the app. I simply export (Share a Master File) of the unrendered timeline, which will render any required timeline sections as the file is being exported. In the dialogue box for settings, you can pick the codec. QuickTime, 8-bit uncompressed is one of the available options. I’ve experienced render corruption with 10-bit Apple codecs, including all favors of ProRes as well as 10-bit uncompressed.
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “Seems to be a variety of third party filters, including MB Looks, Pomfort and Tonalizer. Workaround is to render 8-bit uncompressed or export via Send To Compressor. It’s an Apple problem according to all developer comments. It looks like Motion templates that stick to an Apple workflow (no hacks under the hood) are OK.”
Cool. Thank you, Oliver.
I do wonder why 8bUnc works and nothing else does? Doesn’t that imply there’s a different processing pathway?
And am I understanding correctly that glitch frames only occur when sharing directly from FCPX, and not when sending to Compressor?
[Jeremy Garchow] “The only glitchy renders I have seen is using the Pomfort filter to do a log to 709 color transform. This also happened in FCP7. What footage are you going to be using?”
Thanks, Jeremy. Footage is ProRes 422, coming from a Ki Pro. It’s a full green screen project with light compositing but wall-to-wall graphics.
I’m finding that the FCPX keyer is just insanely fast, and has pretty decent auto-settings — but I’m still struggling a bit refining the edges on hair to the point where I am happy with them. (This may be operator error, and I’m going to give it another go.)
By contrast, in Ae, I was able to pull some great keys with a couple layers of Primatte, at the cost of the longest set-up time and the slowest renders. In Smoke, I was able to pull very good keys including hair with a single Master Keyer node, with the fastest set-up time and very reasonable render times.
I’m confident I could have improved those results by adding another keyer node or by doing some additional edge manipulations, but I had to turn off and stow my electronic devices and return my tray and seat back to their upright, locked positions. The fact that I did all that on my laptop on a plane impressed me, and should make Bill happy!
Back on the graphics side, I’m really, really frustrated with the lack of expressions in Motion. This will not work if I have to expose a dozen parameter to the editor in FCPX that all needed to be manually animated, when this could be reduced to one or two sliders in an Ae template with some expressions.
Back to the drawing board…
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
thats interesting – there was a chap asking for some kind of exposed expressions in FCPX down the thread there –
were you looking to rig for brand elements?
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
-
[Aindreas Gallagher] “thats interesting – there was a chap asking for some kind of exposed expressions in FCPX down the thread there -“
I think I was one of those chaps, discussing exactly this with Shawn Miller — or did I miss one?
[Aindreas Gallagher] “were you looking to rig for brand elements?”
Yes. I am re-considering my approach to see if I can make this work. I really want to give it a fair go.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “I really want to give it a fair go.”
Feel the power of the dark side young Skywalker.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “Feel the power of the dark side young Skywalker.”
“Noooooo!”
Using Motion instead of Ae does feel a bit like having my right hand slashed off…
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Dynamic Link isn’t working. 😉
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up