HD-DSLR slomo issues - Canon 70

First the details:

Clips recorded on Canon 70D 1920x1080 30fps All-I frames
Imported into FCPX 10.2.3
When Imported, clips are copied into library, generating optimized and proxy media.
File shows in browser as H.264 codec. In View, Quality is set to Better Quality, Media is set to Optimized/Original.
Project info shows as 1920x1080 29.97i

Hardware:
MacPro Mid 2012 2x3.06 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
64GB Ram
Four drive Raid 0 (using four slots of MacPro - Hard Drive is PCI-E Excelsior 996 GB SSD

Video is of children on tire swing and boys shooting hoops.

Second camera is Panasonic AG -HPXS500 shooting DVCProHD onto P2 cards.


When a 50% speed adjustment is applied to clips from Canon 70D, playback is jerky - sort of expected that. However when Video Quality is set to Frame Blending there is no improvement. Optical Flow setting returns image artifacts due to high rotational motion of kids on tire swing and extreme movement from boys shooting hoops.

I ran orginal clip through Compressor thinking that transcoding to ProRes 422 might address the issue to no avail after reimporting and replacing clips in project storyline.

The 50% speed effect on the clips shot on the DVCProHD camera came out smooth as silk. Only the clips from the Canon exhibited the jerkiness.

I would have expected jerky from Original Media (being H.264 and all) but I didn't expect that from the Optimized clips created upon import.

I also would have expected All-I frame format to behave better.

Also, even though the Canon 70d was set to 30fps - when the clip is examined it shows a frame rate of 29.97. That matches the project settings but when did it change and is that slight frame rate discrepancy a factor?

One other odd thing even if I put the transcoded clip into a new event (transcoded to ProRes 422 for instance) the codec still showed as H.264 in the browser. Only be renaming the clip (appended ProRes 422 to the clip name) would it recognize the new clip.

So my great concern is that footage shot on the Canon 70D will not be usable with speed changes - unless I've totally missed something . . .and I hope I have missed something simple as we are moving to the HD-DSLR as our main camera in the near future.

Thanks

Bill Buchanan

A couple of things to address your points:
Optical flow works best when the background is stationary so if the cameras were not locked down on your moving subjects, this could be why no noticeable improvement was observed.
The Canon 70D shoots at a much lower bitrate than the Panasonic most likely which could be why the retiming is not as smooth, but specs of your project timeline would be helpful.
The 30fps the Canon shows is a designation for 29.97 fps, the American standard. Your project should also be set for 29.97. 30p is a standard for Europe.
The browser always shows the codec specifications for the original media (hence H.264). If you optimized during import than you are actually working with Prores 422, it just won't display that in the browser pane.
Render your timeline after retiming the clips and check the above items. A 50% retime either fast or slow should still play fairly decent, even with the 70D..