Having problems editing 1080p footage in 720p Project

I have a 720 project where I'm editing 1080 footage. I'm doing this so that I can "zoom" in to some of the clips w/o losing quality. This was very easy and intuitive in FCP7. I'm having issues in FCPX.

I drop the foootage on the timeline and the scale percentage is 100%. The normal expectation is that it should be 66.67% since it's a 1080p file in a 720p project. Now, I understand that becaause of the spatial conform feature (set to fit), that any footage will read 100% when dropped in. So then my understanding is that if the project is 720, I should be able to blow the footage to 150% (yielding 1080) and have it still look good. I did that and the footage looks like something that was blown up 150%. It doesn't have the crisp look that I'd expect.

I've tried resetting spatial conform to "None" yet the Scale % doesn't change. At all three spatial conform settings, the 1080p footage in this 720p project reads 100%.

What am I missing? How can one edit a larger resolution file in a smaller resolution project and get it to work as expected?

Thanks

Are you looking at the rendered output set to high quality playback?

Thanks for your reply Tom. Yep. Playback is set to high quality.

But in any case, should that really matter. If a clip is 1080p and it's dropped in a 720p project, at 100% of it's natural size, it should 1) go beyond the edges of the screen and 2) look "normal." That's not happening here. Even when Spatial Conform is set to "None." That's why I'm thinking this is a bug issue.

I'm on 10.0.7 by the way.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks.

I can't reproduce the problem with matching frame rate media, but you might want to report it to feedback with full specs. It may be format dependent.

I do this all the time as well for callouts/zooming in screencast recordings. The footage looks bad in X if it's not rendered and if the Playback Preference is not set to HQ.

With HQ Playback set and a rendered storyline - it looks great in X and the output is pristine. Spacial Conform set to Fit ...

-paul.

I do have playback set to HQ and the timeline was rendered. It didn't look good. It still looks like footage blown up 150%.

FWIW, I'm working with h.264 raw footage. I don't know why that should matter, but just trying to consider all possibilities.

You want to send me a short clip? I'll test it on my end.

-paul.

Here's a link to a Dropbox with two test clips. The "test clip" is the 1080 clip in a 1080 timeline. The other clip is the same clip in a 720 timeline. This clip is blown up 150%.
www.dropbox.com/sh/krdmkkqyqzalquh/P2_nqrLUq1?lst

I inserted the 1080p clip into my 720p timeline, zoomed to 150%. The noise in the talent's jacket is a bit more obvious. OTOH the playback quality in X is fine as is a test output. It's not pristine - but neither is the source clip. It's as good as to be expected ...

-paul.

Thanks for trying that out. I really appreciate you taking the time. I guess the issue is one of relative quality. The blown up 1080p clip in a 720p projects looks exactly the same as a blown up clip in a 1080p project. The moire issues aside, just looking at the face. Maybe it's my system, but when I look at the blown up clip in the 720p project, it looks like a blown up clip.

Just curious, in your system, when changing the spatial conform settings, does the scale % for the clip change? How is one to know what relative size of a clip they're dealing with? In other words, if you're using 4K footage in a 2k project, how would you know what true percentage of the original you're working with?

So, I think I discovered the issue. It's format related. I dropped some 1080 animation codec clips into the 720 timeline, and when I changed spacial conform to "None" (with Scale at 100%), they grew in size to overfill the screen. When I set their scale to 66.67%, they fit the screen perfectly.

So, I imported some 1080 ProRes LT footage from another project into this project and voila, when spatial conform was set to "none," (and the scale at 100%) the clip grew beyond the size of the project boundaries. It would appear that FCPX has an issue with raw h.264 files as far as spatial conform is concerned.

At least I know I'm not going crazy.

Upon further analysis, I realized that the issue isn't the format, it's synchronized clips!

I transcoded the project clips to ProRes422 thinking that would fix the problem. It didn't. So on a whim I dropped one of the original 1080 h.264 clips (non-synchronized) and it worked as expected. (Which would explain why the test clips I uploaded would work in your system.)

So it was the Spatial Conform of the synchronized clips not working correctly when dropped in the timeline.

Nice. Glad you figured it out.

-paul.

Thanks for your help Paul. Figuring it out is a two-edged sword cuz I had to re-sync the clips in the timeline from the original clips.