How to conform 60fps to 24fps without Cinema Tools?

[Craig Seeman]

There’s a conform speed command in FCPX. It does seem to involve a very fast render though. Download the free trial and give it a whirl and you may have some more detailed questions about how FCPX handles slow motion.

[Walter Hop]

Just dropping the footage into the timeline will play it at original speed, but using Command+R you can open the retime bar and drag the edge of the clip to slow it down to a desired percentage. I guess you would want to slow it to 24 / 60 = 40% speed.

I am not sure if there is an option to guarantee that 1 original frame is matched to 1 frame in the output, which is what I would want ideally. I guess you sort of have to hope that you’re slowing it down to the right amount.

I’ve had a lot of problems with slo-mo videos and inaccurate retiming in FCPX. Sometimes retiming seems to go jittery on clips for no reason at all. The 10.0.1 update does include a fix for retiming, but I don’t know if it fixes my issue. If there is jitter in the resulting output, a stop-gap measure might be to use the “optical flow” algorithm for rate conforming.

[Craig Seeman]

Walter there is a function called Conform which should be frame to frame. What you’re suggesting would result in an optical flow analysis frame creation. That’s not the goal.

[Walter Hop]

Sorry Craig, I wasn’t aware of that term. I’ve found the option now, I think it’s exactly what I was looking for, so thanks!

[Kevin Patrick]

Craig,

What’s the difference between conforming and retiming?

When I take a 60 fps clip and drop it into a 24 fps timeline and choose conform, it appears to simply retime the clip to 40%. If I open up the Retime Editor, that’s what it shows, 40%.

How is that different from dropping the same 60 fps clip into a 60 fps timeline and retiming it to 40%?

I’m assuming there should be a difference.