Slight Blur in Timeline

Hey Gang...

I don't know if anyone else has noticed this behavior, but FCPX is the only NLE I have where when the video is parked on a frame, it's sharp and when it's playing at speed, it's slightly blurry. I've noticed this behavior on three different machines (2 Mac Pros and a MacBook Pro). It doesn't matter what kind of graphics card I have (one MacPro has an ATI 6850 & an NVIDIA 285 and I have tried both). I first noticed it playing through my BM Decklink on my HP Dreamcolor, but it also is the same if its on a 2nd Mac monitor playing at 100%.

The kind of footage doesn't matter (ProRes, H264 etc.). Am I the only one who's noticed this? I checked on Premiere, FCP7, and Davinci Resolve and none of them do this; only FCPX (10.0.7 in my case).

It's really easy to see on stuff like focus charts or type, but it seems to be on everything. I know its not a footage needing to be rendered issue because the footage I'm playing is straight off the drive in the native codec.

Here's the test: pull in some (in focus) footage and park it on a crisp frame. Now hit play and see if gets slightly blurry.

Maybe I'm being picky, but I find it annoying. Anyone else experience this?

Preferences->Playback-> change the Playback Quality menu setting to High Quality. It's probably set to Better Performance (the default)

"but FCPX is the only NLE I have where when the video is parked on a frame, it's sharp and when it's playing at speed, it's slightly blurry."

This used be extremely pronounced in legacy FCP when media needed to be rendered or was not in the exact specs of the sequence. Pre-X versions of FCP also had a high quality playback setting that was switched off by default. It was called Dynamic RT, and the quality of the video changed in playback.

"...only NLE I have where when the video is parked on a frame, it's sharp and when it's playing at speed, it's slightly blurry."

Blatantly not true, to begin with, and factually and issue that is very complex for every NLE on the market today, factually.

Yes, I have noticed this. I guess the rel time effect in Final Cut Pro X is more like a Proxy effect.

But as plysay hints and Tom explained in but more definition... it is a good burden when not wanting to Render.

Kudos for them.

OK... here it is: DOH! My first of the year.....

Of course you're right!

OK... if i can keep my mistakes down to this one, I'll be in good shape...

Thanks for talking me down...

I mean: yes, changing the Pref for Better Performance to Better Quality fixed it!

Yes this one catches a lot of people out. I guess you expect some softening if you're overloading the system but this preference seems to degrade the image even if FCP X can play it just fine.