Gopro videos in fcpX

My wife and I went to a long trip in asia, i have around 1000 short and long gopro clips taken at 720p and 60fps.

As you may suppose, lots of the videos are just the 2 of us walking, looking at things, etc.

I'm trying to create a video of the trip however i'm getting blurry images when I render the final video.
I read somewhere that importing the gopro videos (mp4 files)using gopro studio is better than importing them to fcp so i did that.

Then I tried 2 things. I dropped all the already converted 60fps videos to a 60fps timeline. When i render the video at 60 fps it looks great, however it says it is only valid to play it in my mac, not online, ipad or appletv. Then i render the same 60fps timeline to a 30fps video file that can be played anywhere but the video seems to have lost frames and it doesnt look good.

I also tried dropping the mov files to a 29.97 fps timeline and render it and still get the choppy video playback.

What can I do to get a smooth video to play it online or stream it to a tv?

Thanks in advance

Render is something you do in the Timeline to improve playback.
Share or Export is what you to do create a movie file on your hard drive when done editing.
Frame rate shouldn't matter at all, if you're talking about exporting, keep it all at 60 if that's what you shot at.

What do you want to play back on? Web, TV, iPhone? Each may have different requirements. If you're going to play it on a TV, how will you be doing that specifically?

Web, share Master File, set Format to Web Hosting.
TV, the same should work, depending on how you're getting it to the TV. Are you using iTunes with an Apple TV, or a USB stick, or what?

Thanks for the response

I would like to play it in a tv using apple tv.
Basically i would like to see the video online (youtube) and tv as smooth as I see it in the fcp preview and that is 60 fps.
My doubt is if youtube accepts 60 fps videos

YouTube, there's a few long threads here that discuss how to get YT video to look good.

As for Apple TV, very simple. I do this almost daily. Export/Share as "Master File", then set Format to Apple Devices.

If I do it that way apple devices sets the Fps down to 30.

in your opinion, Is it good to transform de mp4 videos to movs using goprostudio? or use fcp is better?
I have read a lot of this but i still see different opinions.

ed.ford wrote: If I do it that way apple devices sets the Fps down to 30.

in your opinion, Is it good to transform de mp4 videos to movs using goprostudio? or use fcp is better?
I have read a lot of this but i still see different opinions.

My documentary group has a dozen GoPros of various vintage. We never use GoPro Studio, but import directly to FCPX.

We always have mixed content, some from 30 (29.97) fps cameras and some from GoPro at 60 (59.94) fps, so the final output (for Youtube) is 720p @ 30. You raise an interesting question about 60 fps GoPro material, exporting from FCPX at 60 and getting Youtube to accept and play back at 60 fps.

I have seen the articles saying they accept 60 fps, e.g: www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2014/10...edible/#6dab1890525f

But I have never tested it. Supposedly 60 fps playback is only supported in Chrome, and I see lots of complaints about it not working well. On problem would be if it's not supported on all browsers, why limit your audience to just Chrome. Also how do you *really* know Youtube is playing at 60 fps?

Our main use of 60 fps or higher frame rate is smooth slow motion playback at 30 fps, not trying to get true 60 fps playback.

Not sure how helpful this will be for your situation, but I work with GoPro footage every day editing aerial real estate videos. We always shoot in 4K 29.97, and I work on an older macbook (2012 i7 & GPU w/ only 1GB of video RAM), so I transcode to Proxy media when importing into FCPX. This provides generally smooth playback while editing.

As far as 60fps, YouTube can definitely handle it (though I haven't had the chance to produce any 60fps videos myself.) As I'm sure you know, the jump from 30fps to 60 is huge, it really feels like you're lookng through a window, the motion is so fluid. The Ripple Training guys have done a couple of their videos in 60fps. (I do use Chrome, so not sure if other browsers support it, as mentioned above.)

IMO, for your purposes, whenever you can get away with retiming to 50% (in a 29.97 project timeline) you will get really nice slo-mo. You might also experiment with the different Rate Conform setting in the Inspector (Floor, Nearest Neighbor, Optical Flow...) They only become available when the media FPS is different than the Project FPS. This way, it may be possible to combine slo-mo clips and real-time 60fps clips in the same 29.97 project, without stuttering motion. Best of luck to you.

I was going through some old Trello boards, and discovered this detailed description of the Rate Conform function (sorry, I don't know the source, could be from the fcp.co forum, from way back):


"By default, FCP will mix the frame rates using the FLOOR algorithm. This requires no rendering, but you may get better results with one of the other algorithms.

Floor: The default setting. Final Cut Pro truncates down to the nearest integer during its calculation to match the clip’s frame rate to the project’s frame rate.
Nearest Neighbor: Final Cut Pro rounds to the nearest integer during its calculation to match the clip’s frame rate to the project’s frame rate. The Nearest Neighbor option reduces artifacts at the expense of visual stuttering. Rendering is required.
Frame Blending: Creates in-between frames by blending individual pixels of neighboring frames. Slow-motion clips created with Frame Blending appear to play back more smoothly than those created with the Floor or Nearest Neighbor setting. This setting provides better reduction of visual stuttering, but you may see some visual artifacts. Rendering is required.
Optical Flow: A type of frame blending that uses an optical flow algorithm to create new in-between frames. Final Cut Pro analyzes the clip to determine the directional movement of pixels, and then draws portions of the new frames based on the optical flow analysis. Choosing the Optical Flow option results in better reduction of visual stuttering, and Final Cut Pro spends a significant amount of time to fix visual artifacts.
for more see here.... help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0.5/#ver3363b44e