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Slo-mo looks better in preview
Hi,
I drop a DV clip onto a DV timeline, right click on it, adjust speed to 50% with frame blending on. Green bar indicates I’m previewing the effect. Play the clip as is, looks fine. Render. Play clip, looks lousy ( not as smooth as preview).
Sequence is set for frame blending. I’ve tried all the”Motion Filter Quality” settings.
Anyone know how to fix this, ie keep the smoother playback on output?
Thanks,
Gordon
MacPro
FCP 514
OS 10.4.10
QT 7.2
AJA Kona Lhe -
6 Replies
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Outside of pushing it to motion where it will look very good…if you switch to optical flow)…are you looking at the video @ 100? or in your NTSC monitor?
Best,
jeff
Best,
Jeff G
Principal Instructor
Future Media ConceptsFMCTraining.com
Editorsretreat.com -
I’m having a similar issue with an HDV project. I’m a newbie to FCP so I figured it was just user error. But what I’m hearing here is, take it to Motion. Or is there a way to get slo mo to look good using FCP. Guess I should just take the FMC FCP 250 course for experienced editors!!
Mick Haensler
Higher Ground Media -
Mick,
Two thoughts:
FCP uses frame blending. Motion has two other qualities to use. Motion Blur blending and Optical Flow.Optical flow will create a *huge* file (and draw upon all of the frames of clip – if you usually capture the ‘entire’ tape), this will take forever (and then some!) To get around this, export and reimport the relevant frames.
Send to motion. Click on the clip.
F1 takes you to properties. Bottom of the properties pane there is a drop down to pick the rendering quality.Note two: I’d suggest the advanced FCP class – 300 (the experienced editor class 250, specifically is meant for editors coming from a certain purple application.) Yes you can take both at our facilities, but there are a number of great places to take apple training.
You could even drop in your local bookstore and look at (I think it’s chapter 13 or 14) of the Motion 3 book to see how to set this.
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NTSC monitor
I see this every once in a while, especially on stills. A clip looks ok in “preview” (bright green line) , but after rendering it completely falls apart.
Could it be a quicktime bug? Or related to the AJA card?
Gordon Gurley
Director of Operations
Stanford Video -
To Gordon and others,
I have been noticing this problem for years. My workaround has been simply to render everything BUT the speed changes, set my Edit to Tape preference to Preview Quality (not Full, which forces a render), and Edit to Tape with the speed changes left in Green Preview mode.
Ridiculous, but at least it looks better.
Another option (that only works with certain kinds of footage) is to disable Frame Blending. This is usually the first thing I try, but again, it may substitute softness for steppy motion. It really depends on what the footage is, and what the playback speed you are changing to is. It CAN work, depending on the situation.
Lastly, I am not a Motion user, but for complicated speed changes, like Reverses (which FCP simply CANNOT do with any acceptable degree of quality), I export the clip to After Effects, which has no issue at all with doing clean reverses or speed changes. If Motion works for you, God Bless…
I already know After Effects, I already have After Effects, and my belief is if FCP can’t do it, I don’t trust it to another Apple product.
I should say that I have demonstrated this (and several other very odd, and much more disturbing render bugs) to Apple representatives, and have not gotten a satisfactory reply, ie a viable fix.
The workarounds are my own, or stuff I have picked up from valuable community boards like this one.
At the moment, I am really struggling with buggy renders that are far worse than this one, but I feel your pain. It makes no sense that rendering a clip should make it look WORSE. -
Cool, good tips. I’ve also found bugs when rendering certain motion tab animations. Still haven’t found any acceptable answers.
Gordon Gurley
Director of Operations
Stanford Video
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