Question about workflow for a 4K/2K project

Hello everybody!

I have a question concerning a project I'm doing. It's not super simple so I will try to be clear, feel free to ask for more details.

I am editing a project shot in 4K. My timeline is 4K.

One of my shots is poorly framed and I need to zoom in quite a lot.

Question 1: intuitively I'd say that if my final export is 2K, I can zoom in my clip at 200% without any quality loss. Is it true ?

Question 2: if what I just wrote is true, then what is the correct workflow ? Do my zoom in, export in 4K then recompress in 2K? When I zoom

(Note: I do not have a 4K monitor. Just a regular one. It's part of my confusion)

Thanks a lot for your help!!!

1. Not in a 4k project. If you want to do that you should edit in a 2k project. If you export the 4k project you have trashed the shot that was zoomed in. Once the picture deteriorates you can't get it back.

Thank you Tom! I've already edited my 4K timeline. Can I just go to settings of the project and change it to 2K ?

manoucho wrote: Thank you Tom! I've already edited my 4K timeline. Can I just go to settings of the project and change it to 2K ?

Yes, you should be able to do this. One of the good things about FCPX is that you can change the size of a project, and it will keep the scaling of everything correct (there may be exceptions to this, but it has worked for me). Once you change the project to 2k, you should be able to zoom in to a good degree without losing quality.

Hi,

That's great. Thanks a lot for the help!

I'd make a project snapshot first, just to be safe.