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FCP’s dirty little secret… a challenge for the experts!
(let me start by saying that I’ve asked 2 FCP Certified Trainers about this, and both times I was told “Hmm – we’ll have the Apple engineers look into this and get back to you”, and I have never heard back from either of them. So – bring on the COW experts!)
Final Cut Pro, Downconverting & Scaling Quicktimes
Combining HD and anamorphic footage, or high-res stills into an FCP NTSC 4:3 sequence is easy, right? You simply drag it to your timeline, and it automatically scales it to the right size and adjusts the aspect ratio accordingly. We
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39 Replies
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[David Jahns] “Did you ever notice that sometimes it looks quite good, and sometimes it looks, well, …pretty crappy?”
What formats and frame rates are you combining?
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html
Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi
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To demonstrate the issue, I’m trying to intergrate HD footage (1080p24) into an NTSC 4:3 timeline. But the same issues arise with all oversized formats.
It has to do with FCP scaling and distorting quicktimes into an interlaced timeline. It’s all explained and shown in detail in that link in the main post.
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Since all the examples show issues with the INTERLACED timelines, I’d suspect it was an issue with interlacing…what that would do to the image.
Now, have you done tests with other edit systems to see how they treat the footage? So that you can compare FCP’s engine to another one. That is what I would like to see.
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
[David Jahns] “To demonstrate the issue, I’m trying to intergrate HD footage (1080p24) into an NTSC 4:3 timeline. But the same issues arise with all oversized formats.”
You’re taking upper field first material and placing it into a lower field first timeline. Probably the Shift Fields Filter or the Center Position or both are wrong.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html
Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi
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In my experience, mixing formats with the same frame rate, 5 cows.
Mixing formats with different frame rate, 1 cow.
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In all of your examples I don’t see any loss of resolution jaggies. What I do see is interlacing being added. FCP is adding pulldown and introducing interlacing is all that I see. Now whether it’s doing a good job of it or not I don’t know. But it’s not a resolution loss. It’s an interlacing issue.
On another example you point out some “ghosting” on the edges of the letterbox. That image most likely needs to be moved up or down 1 pixel. In the past FCP has had issues placing material dead center when it should be placed on a even or odd vertical scan line to maintain the fields. Placing a 480 sequence into a 486 sequence for example, looks best when you move the sequence from dead center up or down 1 pixel, maintaining original field order. FCP doesn’t have to interpolate anything. The rez and ghosting issues you mention look like the field problem. Move it a pixel and see if it’s solved.
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the HD footage is progressive, with field dominance = NONE.
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[Bret Williams] “In all of your examples I don’t see any loss of resolution jaggies. What I do see is interlacing being added. FCP is adding pulldown and introducing interlacing is all that I see.”
I concur on that. Interlacing is the issue. Image is not postioned correctly or the Shift Fields Filter has been applied incorrectly. No “dirty little secret” that I see.
I see issues like this all the time when I up-rez SD projects to HD because the Shift Fields filter is applied automatically by FCP. Remove Attributes > Filters and the problem is gone.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html
Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi
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David,
I had a similar issue trying to down res HDV to DV25 3:4 letterbox that I posted in August
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/952798
I tried changing Field Dominance, Pixel Shift , Render Quality Setting and Center Position with the same results. I also tried 8 and 10 bit uncompressed settings with no improvement. Finally I had to use Compressor to get a quality down convert. I just don’t think FCP scales all that well. By the way all of the sample images in my post are interlaced.Lee Berger
http://www.leebergermedia.com -
If the jaggies are coming simply because the timeline is interlaced, then Frame #3 and #10 would also show jaggies, wouldn’t they? But they don’t.
The difference is that Frame #3 is scaling a TIFF, and Frame #10, the QT has no scaling or aspect distortion.
Try it! Take a 24frame HD quicktime and drop it into an NTSC 4:3 interlaced timeline, and take the same clip and drop it into an NTSC 24 frame (non-interlaced) timeline, and then look closely. Do they look the same?
Yet drop a 1920 x 1080 TIFF into both timelines, and they both look great. (Or drop a 24frame NTSC clip into a 29.97 timeline (without any distortion) – and it looks great, besides the duplicated frame.)
Am I crazy? If I am doing something wrong – what?
There is no shift fields filter applied (it’s progressive footage), and the idea of vertical shifting one pixel only works when dealing with the 480 vs 486 NTSC formats – and there is no scaling involved. A pixel shift does nothing for HD to SD scaling.
I’m sure many of you have mixed HD footage into an SD Interlaced timeline, right? What did you have to do – shift fields, offset pixels – what? Tell me what works for you.
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