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FCP/MOTION Roundtrip = BLURRY
I’ve done this a hundred times in this HD screen capture project – but it won’t work in a couple of crucial shots. And there are no apparent differences in settings between the shots that work and the ones that don’t…
In the FCP timeline, the footage is scaled to 95% – looks perfectly crisp – I have to match cut to the same shot in a motion project where other elements are added & etc. Like I said, it works most of the time – but in these couple of shots, there’s a noticeable BLUR, an unacceptable decrease in sharpness, on the cut to the motion project.
Just as a test – I created a new sequence – put source footage in timeline – left first second at 100% in fcp – send next second to Motion – did nothing to it. Just to see what roundtrip does to sharpness – rendered side by side in FCP timeline
Motion stuff is blurry.
Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.
Sequence is 1280x720p, 25 fps, Apple ProRes(HQ) render settings=Best, video processing 10/YUV (behaves same in 8 bit)
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8 Replies
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Do the settings in your Motion project match your sequence settings in FCP?
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yes, triple checked
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I duplicated your test and I see what you mean.
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Exploring a little further, I seem to get a sharper effect when I change the FCP sequence setting, Render Control, Master Template & Motion Project, Quality = Normal instead of Best.
In other words, BEST = blurry. NORMAL = sharper. I have no explanation at the moment. It does explain why BEST rendering does wonders to settle down moire and edge problems on moving stills (at the expense of much longer render time).
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OK, now it’s getting complicated. I tested a psd and a jpg saved out of Photoshop with and without the round trip to Motion. These looked the same whether round-tripped to Motion or not. No difference between Normal or Best render control either. These files were created at 1280×720, square pixels. The screen grab was an odd size, 1317×943. So, is it something about the size that changes how FCP or Motion deals with the picture?
I took the screen grab that exhibited the difference between Motion and Non-Motion versions and cropped it to 1280×720. Voila, now there is no difference between the one sent to Motion and the one not sent to Motion. I’ve seen examples of this before. Somewhere in the application, graphics that are exactly sequence-size are treated differently than those that are a different size.
Maybe some of the older hands with FCP can explain some of this.
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I solved the mystery and I’ll post it here (and at at the other forum I posted on) in case anyone else falls down this weird little rabbit hole.
It’s a screen capture project, w/ source footage 1344 x 840. I did the rough edit in a 1344×840 timeline – for timing and sync w/narration. I copied the sequence and converted it to 1280×720 to do the pans, zooms and final framing. From this timeline, I often sent stuff to motion for masks, mattes and graphics – and it worked 85% of the time…
But other stuff was going fuzzy. To fix it, I went back to the 1344×840 timeline – sent to motion from there and rebuilt the shot. Then brought that full rez motion file into 1280×720…
The match cuts between source footage and motion files are now invisible.
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[Dylan Murphy] ” I copied the sequence and converted it to 1280×720 to do the pans, zooms and final framing. From this timeline, I often sent stuff to motion for masks, mattes and graphics – and it worked 85% of the time… “
Dylan, Could you explain this again? Not sure what you mean when you say you converted the sequence to 1280×720. Also, could you point me to the other forum post so that I can see the responses there? Thx. – Tom
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I captured at 1344×840 and my target output rez was 1280×720 – I just copied the clips from one timeline and pasted them in another (with different sequence presets).
https://www.lafcpug.org/phorum/read.php?7,226728,226728#msg-226728
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