Video Quality

hi all, hope you are all well,

this is the first post on this forum so please bare with me

i was hoping for a little guidance here if anyone can help.

so my problem is that when i shoot in 1080 25fps on my dslr, video looks fantastic, however when i put the footage into final cut X, it looks either slightly soft and /or not as clear as it should be for 1080.

not really sure why but if anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards

Marc

Welcome!

Sorry if I ask the stupid questions:

It looks great on your DSLR, where the screen is small and the contrast maybe artifically boosted. What you need to compare is, on your mac: the file straight from camera and the one inside FCPX. Do you see a difference ?

lol, no not at all,

it seems ok, just a little soft, even though i focused first to take a picture, then pressed record,

it just seems lower quality than it should, saying that it is just the quality of my macbook pro that im goin on i havent tried it over hdmi to anything else yet.

Is playback set to better performance or better quality?

Tis set to better quality

can you send us a screenshot of:

- the original file opened in quicktime (not in FCPX)
- the same frame at the same size in your FCPX viewer

marcjwebbmusic wrote: ..1080 25fps on my dslr, video looks fantastic, however when i put the footage into final cut X, it looks either slightly soft and /or not as clear as it should be for 1080....

If your initial evaluation was on the camera LCD or a small field monitor, that will look sharper due to the smaller screen size.

If you are playing the camera native file directly on your MacBook, what playback software are you using?

Import a clip to FCP X, export it using ProRes 422 at 1080p, play the file and examine it on the same screen where you examined the initial material. If that looks OK it's not FCP.

If this is a Canon 5D Mark III, the out-of-camera footage is slightly soft by design to reduce aliasing and moire. You then use modest deconvolution sharpening to recover this.

Ah I see. That makes sense. Like I said it is just a little soft.

When getting the .mov from my camera initially it's played with QuickTime as standard once checked I then drop it into fc
Are there better settings on the camera I could be using ?

It's a canon 60d

I suggest you export a test clip from FCP X using 1080p ProRes 422, play that back using Quicktime and compare to the out of camera footage. If it looks the same, FCP X isn't causing unsharp footage on the output.

It may *look* slightly unsharp during playback depending on your playback quality option and playback window size. support.apple.com/kb/PH15848?viewlocale=en_US

If you played the camera media using Quicktime on a small window and compared to FCP X playback using a larger window, the smaller window will look sharper. So for every evaluation, use exactly the same playback window size.

Likewise the upper-right corner of the FCP X playback window should be set to "fit", and "better quality" to evaluate this situation. If it was set to 100% this would scale up the image showing defects more clearly.

In general you can use "better performance" for playback but for this case use "better quality".

I don't recollect a case where playback resolution was related to codec, but you could try importing a test clip with "optimized media", or right click on the clip in the event browser, pick "transcode", then "optimized media".

I wouldn't worry about the camera at this point. The same camera files are appearing differently in FCP X vs Quicktime so stick to that problem without changing the camera.

think i have found the culprit

so following you tube for film look settings the settings on my custom profile has reduced sharpening, whereas filming with a flat or standard setting is a million times better

now its sharp, didnt have to move it much to make a difference

thanks for everyones help here, its nice to see the support even tho this is the first time to the forum.

thanks again all for your help.

marc