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I'm trying to get into drone video work for real estate to compliment my photography. I'm doing a few freebie test runs for a client and when I compare my work to one of my competitors it looks soft in comparison. When comparing in FCP to the quick time example of my competitor, they look similar in sharpness (although his is still sharper). When I export the video as a quick time movie it looks noticeably soft in comparison. I have tried exporting as both "Apple ProRes422" and "H.264" and both versions look soft. I shot the footage at 24fps with a shutter speed varying between varying between a 50th and 100th of a second , as an MP4 at 3840x2160 and modified the settings to 1280x720 after importing and editing. Any ideas?

24fps will produce considerable motion blur. Try a higher frame rate.

There are several parameters influencing the impression of 'sharp' … or, perhaps say 'crisp'.
… a long list…

Camera…
There are drones, putting the cam into some 'dome' - which affects the sharpness.
Quality of cam - plastic lens? Size of sensor? Gimbal? Vibrations?

Settings…
a 1/50th is very low speed - gives some nice natural 'motion smear' ( I prefer that!) - but contradicts sharpness.
Cranking that up to, say 1/1000th, creates crystal sharp frames - but, results in 'stutter'. I LOVE to link to this interactive demo
frames-per-second.appspot.com
bitrate - defines 'quality' in compression - is it set to maximum?

NLE…
Avoid any manual, useless conversions before import. FCPX eats'em all!
If you set your viewer to 'faster/proxy' don't forget to set it back to 'original'
… you can 'pimp' the clips, a Noise Reducer (Neat) or a Sharpener Filter (FCPX own, or some use a custom-built from Motion to have access to Unsharp Mask Filter)…
Grading - using the scopes, you can increase contrasts and/or saturations, which gives an overall 'sharper' impression

list tbc.…

No General advice possible. 'Real' sharpness is 90% hardware, the more expensive the better. 'Sharp Impression' can be tweaked by turning several knobs'n buttons …

Endless topic … :woohoo: