FCPX options

Hi, I was wondering what is the best settings I can use for FCPX with footage captured with a Sony DVCAM, SD 1080i 60p. I noticed that there is no option for DVCAM in FCPX only a NTSC but when I choose that, the quality doesn't come out as good as it was either in the importing viewer or the camera playback. In FCP7 I imported the same footage with a better quality result. However, I would much rather use FCPX. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

You need to give us a better idea of your source material: I'm afraid the format you've quoted makes no sense to me:

• "DVCAM" is a standard-def, mostly tape-based format - Sony's 'professional' implementation of DV. It could be NTSC or PAL, interlaced with either format.
• "SD" tallies with that.
• "1080i" would indicate 1080-line high definition, which contradicts the previous. Still interlaced, though.
• "60p" means 60 frames per second, progressive scan. Which contradicts the 'i' part of 1080i.

I've only had limited experience of DV/DVCAM capture in FCPX, and what I have done was PAL, but the footage came in cleanly and played back without issue. I saw no degraded quality. Note that while playing FCPX tends to soften the image somewhat for performance reasons - it snaps into full quality when you pause playback.

Alternatively, if you really do have a 1080i HD source, playing it back in an NTSC timeline will throw away 3/4 of the pixel information. If you've dubbed 1080i to DVCAM that stage may already have happened before ingest.

However, for anything more than general advice you'll have to clarify your source format for us.

Im trying to provide some images of my capture settings but It won't allow me to upload.

Here is a slide show of images that I have taking that show the equipment and settings that I used to capture and import the footage.



Extra: Every time I start a new FCPX project the picture is very soft/fuzzy (For DV). I can't seem to figure out what the problem is. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

OK, so - everything you show there looks set up for anamorphic widescreen standard-def NTSC, interlaced. If you're trying to edit in a 1080 timeline in Final Cut, it's scaling the heck out of your footage. Your timeline settings should probably be more like NTSC SD, 720x480 DV anamorphic, 29.97i.

It's worth setting your viewer to 100%, just to remove one set of scaling that could be going on.

Can you post a sample clip?

Here is a sample clip that includes an image, text, and some footage. The image and text don't really look so great, is there a solution for this? Also, a far distant person doesn't look so good in the footage as well (DJ for example, is there a solution?). Lastly, I exported as DV, is this correct?



Also, if its not too much to ask for, for the Timecode Display do I check the "Drop Frame" or "Non-Drop Frame" ?

Lastly, the render format I have it as "Apple ProRes 422 (HQ)" is this correct?

Thanks!

Edit: This video was not sent to compressor, the images and text look a little better on YouTube but the original MOV file I have on my desktop is not as good.

That looks pretty much how I'd expect standard-def footage to look, to be honest. I'm not sure what you're seeing that I'm not. The text is sharp when played at 480p resolution - if you're seeing it soft in other situations, maybe you're only seeing half of the vertical lines thanks to deinterlace settings somewhere? YouTube appears to have processed this correctly, I don't see interlacing artefacts, and text looks sharp. Perhaps you can screenshot something that looks rough on your system?

I don't know about drop-frame vs. non-drop-frame timecode, sorry: I've managed to avoid NTSC entirely.

ProRes HQ is overkill for most situations - plain ProRes should be more than adequate and will require less drive space/bandwidth. There's no particular harm in choosing the higher level of render quality, but do check that your drives can cope with the data rate.

Exporting as DV is fine, but will leave you with (very) large files to upload. DV is rather lightly-compressed by modern standards. It's more normal to upload a high-bitrate H.264 output.

Looks fine to me.


To reduce the fuzziness within FCPX go to: Preferences - Playback - Playback quality and set to Higher Quality

Also click the viewer display option switch (next to the zoom level at the top right of the viewer) and make sure Show Both Fields is ticked.

I can only agree with jjsanderson, looks like normal SD footage to me just like in your other post.
No need to us ProRes stick with DV or H.264.

Thanks everyone!

I always thought that there was a way to make SD look better using FCPX and Compressor. Learned my lesson