[Tapio Haaja]

Actually FCPX does fairly decent job in HD>SD and SD>HD scaling. It might be little bit soft to someones eyes but it’s much better than having all kind of aliasing and moire problems.

Anyway to your topic. There’s really no magic way achieving great quality from 360p to 1080p. With this big scaling you can and should add sharpening to your material after scaling. Depending what kind of material you have you might benefit using Neat Video’s excellent noise reduction tool. Sadly at the moment it only works in Motion and not in FCPX.

Best
Tapio Haaja

On-Air Promotion Producer
https://avseikkailuja.blogspot.com/

[Tapio Haaja]

Oh… You had already spoken about 32-bit floating point issue. Should have read whole thread first properly… Sorry.

Anyway I find it interesting that if I render exactly same clip with some effect in Motion or FCPX there’s usually big difference in rendering time. Sometimes slower sometimes faster. Because AFAIK Motion and FCPX are basicly sharing same rendering engine.

Best
Tapio Haaja

On-Air Promotion Producer
https://avseikkailuja.blogspot.com/

[Tapio Haaja]

Interesting test Oliver! I think testing to be fair you should turn on 32-bit floating point processing on all softwares. Or at least best possible quality because as we know FCPX is always rendering at 32-bit floating point. I don’t know if it makes any difference but anyway.

Another thing I’ve noted is that some plugins (especially FxFactory plugins) are much slower in FCPX than in Motion. Especially user interfaces. for example UI of Moods plugin.

Best
Tapio Haaja

On-Air Promotion Producer
https://avseikkailuja.blogspot.com/

[Tapio Haaja]

Okay, I have been testing with AJA Kona LHi and LHe but not with AJA Kona 3. So I guess it works then 🙂 Worst thing in my experience is terrible lag in AJA monitoring when working. It completely slows down my work. That’s why I’ve been editing without AJA and then when needed just checked sequence through broadcast monitor. I think that the whole logic of that you have to make I/O specific sequences in Premiere and even choose own settings for source monitor is very very awkward. Whole broadcast I/O looks like afterthought in Premiere for me. I just hope Adobe spends some serious time with these issues.

Best
Tapio Haaja

On-Air Promotion Producer
https://avseikkailuja.blogspot.com/

[Tapio Haaja]

I’ve been testing Premiere Pro extensively with AJA hardware and it simply sucks. Lots of lagging, you lose lots of realtime and all kind of weird stuff… And what I read experience is more or less similar with Blackmagic and Matrox. Now I just tested Avid MC6 with AJA Kona LHi hardware and I have to say it’s like dream after Premieres terribly performance. Actually I think AJA Kona never worked so smoothly even with FCP7. Premiere is great software but hardware I/O sucks badly at the moment and that’s main reason why I haven’t moved to Premiere yet. If you work only with your monitor Premiere works flawlessly. I think there must something badly broken deep in the engine because neither AJA, Blackmagic or Matrox haven’t been able to make great performance drivers for Premiere. I really really hope this is one thing Adobe addresses in CS6 because otherwise I think Premiere is great!

Best
Tapio Haaja

On-Air Promotion Producer
https://avseikkailuja.blogspot.com/

[Tapio Haaja]

Here in Finland my intuition is that about 80% of broadcast professionals edit with FCP7 and 20% with Avid. At the moment I haven’t yet heard any big facilities moving to any direction. It seems everyone is still doing waiting game and watching how FCPX evolves and what Adobe brings with CS6. Of course Avid people will stay with Avid but it seems that for FCP7 people Avid is the last choice at the moment… Although personally I have to say I was really impressed how well MC6 works with AJA Kona cards after terrible performance and bugs in Premiere. But I guess FCPX’s perception is more or less same here in Finland than in US.

Best
Tapio Haaja

On-Air Promotion Producer
https://avseikkailuja.blogspot.com/

[Tapio Haaja]

– Indicator that tells audio offset compared to original video.

Best
Tapio Haaja

On-Air Promotion Producer
https://avseikkailuja.blogspot.com/

[Tapio Haaja]

Yeah FxFactory guys confirmed this softening and said there’s nothing they can do and hoped people would send lots of feedback for Apple that 3rd party plugin makers can build real plugins that work straight with FCPX and not through these Motion templates which involve lot of limitations and all this scaling (softening) with non-square video material. So please send feecback to Apple. It seems after all that they are listening 🙂

https://www.apple.com/feedback/finalcutpro.html

Best
Tapio Haaja

On-Air Promotion Producer
https://avseikkailuja.blogspot.com/

[Tapio Haaja]

Nope nope. I’m deeper than interlace problems 😀 I’ve also build some plugins by myself and know quite well how video flows between plugins and program. I’m 99% sure problem is how plugins see video through these Motion templates. Plugins should see video in their original size but motion templates scale non-square material first to square pixel -> then plugin does it’s work -> then FCPX scales material back to anamorphic and this scaling causes blurring…

It doesn’t happen inside Motion where plugins get straight video material pixel by pixel.

Best
Tapio Haaja

On-Air Promotion Producer
https://avseikkailuja.blogspot.com/

[Tapio Haaja]

Yeah I have rendered, looking both frames etc.. I actually reported this to FxFactory guys back in the days in July and they said it’s Apples fault how filters see material through Motion templates. Because if you add these filters straight in Motion to nonsquare material there isn’t any problems but in FCPX it’s bad bad bad…

Best
Tapio Haaja

On-Air Promotion Producer
https://avseikkailuja.blogspot.com/