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FCP X SD Anamorphic workaround & h264 tests. Great Results.
I have a 2 hour timeline that was SD Anamorphic, ProRes LT footage. FCP X didn’t see the footage as anamorphic and also currently doesn’t let you flag a clip anamorphic so I created a SD Anamorphic project and then brought in the video and stretched it to 133% on the X axis, to make it fill the 16×9 frame. This left the entire timeline needing to be rendered because of the stretching. These were just cuts and audio fixes, so I didn’t want to re-render the whole thing, but I had a plan (see method 1 below). Delivery was a h264 file to be played on an Apple TV.
In the past when I would do these kinds of projects, I would export a reference movie from FCP 7 and then use one of my presets in Compressor to make the h264. So I tried something similar (Method 1), then just for fun I did Method 2. Wow. What a difference. Here are the details:
Method 1 – FCP X to ProRes, ProRes to Compressor
1. Duplicated the timeline and changed the settings to SD regular (4×3 that is) and put all the video clips back to 100% width. Therefore not requiring any rendering.
2. Exported a ProRes version of the 4×3 timeline. Remember I didn’t render the timeline. (33 minutes)
3. From Compressor, forced the output to 853×480, frame controls off and exported h264, 2000 mbp/s, 2 pass. (3 hrs 40 minutes)
Total Time: 4 hours 13 minutes
File Size: 1.88 GBMethod 2 – FCP X to h264
1. Used “export movie” on the original 16×9 timeline to h264 on FCP X share menu. No settings to change. (This timeline still showed the entire 2 hrs needed to be rendered, but I didn’t render it.)
Total Time: 1 hour 4 minutes.
File Size: 1.89 GBWow. Twice as fast as real time h264 exporting AND rendering, and my machine is no spring chicken! (see below). There is really some amazing engine under there in FCP X. Plus I’m not going to be too concerned with rendering before I export if I am in a hurry. Note there there was a tiny luminance difference between in h264 encodes, but it looks like it might just be the color profile. The Compressor version had HD (1-1-1) while the FCP X had SD (6-1-6). The resulting h264 file played perfectly on the Apple TV.
MacPro 2006 4 core, 2.66 ghz
13GB Ram
OWC Raid (150 MB/s)
Radeon 5770P.S. I did another test on Method 2 where I put an adjustment layer with a color change just to make sure it was really rendering the whole 2 hr timeline. No difference in time.
This was run a few days ago on 10.0, I redid it yesterday on 10.0.1. Prores export was faster by about 10 minutes, but h264 was exactly the same.
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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque -
5 Replies
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Yes, it’s unbelievable there’s no way to tell clip is anamorphic in FCPX. I guess it has something to do that all the filmstrip pics should be rendered once again after that. But so what. I also tried some scripts that change the quicktime aspect ratio but it seems that FCPX is not reading that. So if some developer sees this who knows what is the anamorphic tag FCPX reads I’d easily donate some money if someone could create simple script that changes SD clips tag to anamorphic.
Best
Tapio HaajaOn-Air Promotion Producer
https://avseikkailuja.blogspot.com/ -
I would check out QT Edit in Digital Rebellion’s Pro Media Tools.
You would want to modify the aspect ratio to 40:33.
It works.
Jeremy
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Holy… Thanks Jeremy! I’ve been googling and trying different strange command line metadata editors without success but yes QT edit works! Thank you, thank you, thank you 🙂 Correct value for PAL SD seems to be 118:81.
Best
Tapio HaajaOn-Air Promotion Producer
https://avseikkailuja.blogspot.com/ -
Woops. PAL. Sorry about that! I gave NTSC standards. How very myopic of me!
Jeremy
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Yes, it works – to an extent.
Strangely, QuickTime Player 7 and the Finder’s QuickLook feature continue to incorrectly display the video in 4×3. QuickTime X and FCP X display correctly, though the former reports that the pixel dimensions are 1023×576, when it should be 1024×576 (PAL) – no idea what happened to that extra pixel! It works, but I’m just nervous something’s just not quite right.
Alternatively, I’ve found that using the “Transform” feature to stretch the image horizontally works perfectly well for me. It requires a bit of rendering time, but to my great surprise the results were indistinguishble from FCP7 using it’s anamorphic flag.
I always thought ‘stretching’ like this wouldn’t work, because it’s more about changing the PIXEL aspect ratio than the overall image aspect ratio – but does it make any difference? Perhaps someone with more technical knowledge can tell me!
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