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Footage in and out of focus
While reviewing an edit the other day one of my producers said, as we viewed an interview subject, “Hey, is she dropping in and out of focus?”
Sure enough I re-ran the clip and there–viewing it with our noses almost against the monitor screen–was a slight, almost imperceptible, shift in and out of focus in an almost rhythmic pattern. We have not noticed this anywhere else in the doc, though it’s so slight it could easily have evaded our attention. I went back to the clip’s master clip and it does NOT appear to share this problem, so the problem is apparently–thankfully– in FCP and not the original footage (shot 24p in a DVX100a–with manual, not automatic, focus, btw).
Has anyone else ever exerienced this? Is there hope for this clip? Is there a fix?
alan b
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4 Replies
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What filter(s) did you add to this clip in the final Timeline?
1. Make SURE you have rendered this clip (at highest quality).
2. You might want to FORCE a RE-RENDER of this clip by making a “do-nothing” change in a filter setting (a red line should appear above it) and then render it again.
3. If its still a problem:
THE FOLLOWING COMES FROM THE KEN STONE WEBSITE:
“Over 5,000 years ago Confucius wrote: ‘If you are toiling away, you have changed nothing and FCP heads South on you, [starts behaving in strange ways] then it is time to trash your FCP Preferences.’ ”Click the following link for instructions.
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/trashing_fcp_prefs.html
A great way to do this is to use “FCP Rescue” a free Apple Script that will Trash the Preferences for you (and restore nearly all of your user settings afterward).
There are versions for FCP (Pro) & FCE (Express) and a new one for FCP 5.Download these free Apple Scripts at
https://fcprescue.andersholck.com/
This is one FCP tip that has helped in solving hundreds of “odd” problems.
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Well, I didn’t have any filters on it, so that ain’t it.
I tried the forced re-render and that didn’t help.
It’s rendered highest quality.
But I will try that FCP rescue deal.
Thanks for your help
alan b
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You might want to check to see if an imperceptible motion effect was accidently applied, a slow vertical movement will do exactly what your’e describing.
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Wow. What the…?
I checked the motion window and doggoneit if there wasn’t some mystery time remapping control activated. How on earth could that have happened? All I did was drop this clip into the time line. Didn’t even do an audio level correction on it. I don’t even know what the function of time remapping is!
Best part–other than this seeming to have cleared up the problem–is that I did a double-P and tried just removing the keyframe points on the time remap and the clip froze on the frame that the playhead was sitting on. I had to delete and drop in a new clip.
What a freakout.
Thanks so much Mr. Aulier…I have the feeling that a prefs trashing is in order.
alan b
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