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Fuzzy Wuzzy – The Video is Fuzzy and my brain is Wuzzy
Just switched from imovie11 to FinalCutProX. I’m shooting with a Canon Vixia HV30 and blowing it big time somewhere along the line and not sure where.
The goal is to shoot a talking head video in front of a green screen in High Definition. I initially set my camera to manual settings and HDV30 but I couldn’t get anything to come out in focus so I took the cowards way out and set the camera on auto. I’m not shooting for Spielberg and at least what I ended up with looked somewhat crisper. However it doesn’t look so crisp when it starts to play in FCProX. It immediately goes a little fuzzy. I also can’t seem to get anything other than 960X540 29.7 fps. I was aiming for 1280 X 720.
I am admittedly an amateur at this but I thought I’d had it down today and spent hours getting 3 5 minute videos and 12 hours later I’ve nothing I can use. I could use some help.
John
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8 Replies
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Some basic things.
X is built to take footage in FAST and create low rez footage proxys initially, even in video tracks. So your tracks might simply be “unprocessed.” Park your playhead on a frame and see if it “crisps up” if so, you’re just unrendered.
Use the render manager (click the circle in the timcode display to launch it) to see whether things are in process under the hood.
If things are fully rendered and they’re STILL fizzy, then you need to investigate farther.
Good luck.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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If they’re still fuzzy, then check and make sure you don’t have “better performance” checked in playback prefs. And since you’re probably using interlaced, make sure the viewer window pulldown has “show both fields” checked.
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If things are 960×540 you might have created Proxy media on import.
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Not sure what proxy media creation is?
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Check your prefs. If you have create proxy media selected, then FCP x will create low res proxy media as well as optimized or original media. If you made proxys, just switch playback prefs to original. And also check the other suggestions.
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Hi John,
If the suggestions from the FCP X gurus don’t help—
Try playing your footage HDMI out the camera to a HD monitor/TV and see if the footage is out of focus. There is a button near the lens that switches the cam to manual focus and MF appears on the LCD. Also sometimes even if this is not set the camera gets screwed up and the solution is to turn off and turn back on the cam. This will be a soft reset and auto focus should kick in. If not then you need to try a hard factory reset. Unless you are shooting a macro type ECU you do not want to use manual focus on this cam.
Also make sure the play out is set to HDV and not standard DV.
MacPro4,1 2.66GHz 8 core 12gigs of ram. GPU: Nvidia Geoforce GT120 with Vram 512. OS X 10.6.x; Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170, Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.
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Here’s a link showing a tiny clip. I just saved “master file”. So it’s a .mov. Hopefully it will help in the diagnosis. https://puppydogobediencetrainingwithjohnwade.ca/sandbox/
John
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[John Wade] “Hopefully it will help in the diagnosis.”
Actually, a screen grab of your export settings would help.
Also, a screen grab of how you imported your clips and a screen grab of the info window on a selected clip.
And a screen grab of your playback and importing preferences window.
That will tell us is you made proxies, how you exported, how you may have imported, and the quality selected for playback.
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