HD-DSLR slomo issues - Canon 70D

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

Creating Optimized media does not add any image data the original didn't have. That just can't be done. It only make it easier for the CPU/GPU to process the frames faster and easier. Can in cases allow for pushing the boundaries of color grading. But that's about it.

Place your clip in a 24fps timeline, and in the retiming menu set to "Automatic Speed". Then you'll get all of the original frames used across the Timeline, and the best in-camera slow motion you can get. Slow it down more from there.

Should have shot it in 60p, places in a 24p timeline. Anyway, some clips are better suited for slo-mo than others. Also depends on aperture speed when shot. Slower gives more frame blending (blur), faster makes for sharper images. All depends on what you're after.

One other thing, I am not a Canon user, so I don't know which cameras work this way, but some Canons record 30p video as a 60i file, which could introduce stuttering depending on how FCPX interprets it.

I responded to your other post of the same topic.