FCPX rendering font animation is stuttery

Hi there,

I am rendering font animation based on a motion preset and when viewing in from within FinalCutProX 10.4.9 everything animates buttery smooth, but the moment I export it (ProRes 4444) the animation is not linear anymore and has micro stuttering in it.
What am I missing?

Thanks,

MatzeHali

1, Why ProRes4x4?
2, What is the size and duration of that exported file?
3, What year/model Mac, specs?

ProRes4x4 because I want to export the animation including the alpha channel.
It's about 5minutes, the opening title sequence of a feature film.
It's a MacPro 2013 8-core 3GHz dual 700D graphics with 64GB RAM.
Catalina 10.15.6, FCPX 10.4.9.
Turns out, the same bundle opened on the MacBookPro 2016 with Touch Bar and Intel Iris 550 (Mojave 10.14.6, FCPX 10.4.9) works when rendering and sharing, so it's either a Catalina or a MacPro problem.
So, I just needed to wait for the render to complete a little longer and it's good to know for the future.
Also submitted a bug report to Apple.
Thanks,

M

2013 MBP is not a very powerful GPU at all. I'd say that's your issue. And ProRes 4x4 makes some very huge files, requiring some serious power to play back. It plays fine on your 2016 plays better shows that.

Well, nobody is talking about a MacBookPro, but a MacPro with two D700 "workstation" graphic cards in it.
And both machines play it back well without the effect being rendered, the MacPro with the D700s actually way outperforming the MacBook from 2016 in basically any realtime metric regarding complex motion animations, the problem is only when rendering, hence I submitted a bug report to Apple. It is clearly not logical that the real time playback would be looking silky smooth and the render would be jaggy and stuttery.
Also, the ProRes4444 files are very easy to be played back, the whole movie is actually in the timeline as ProRes4444 and does not stutter or anything.
It's actually the position of the letters which are animated are different in the render vs. the real time preview, making it appear stuttery, even if it's smooth in the real time playback when not rendered or shared.

Just think of it as the following, the O being a black pixel and the X being a white pixel and every block is a tiny crop of a frame line on consecutive frames.
With the realtime playback I would get:

XOOOOOO - OXOOOOO - OOXOOOO - OOOXOOO - OOOOXOO - OOOOOXO - OOOOOOX

With the shared file or rendered timeline I would get:

XOOOOOO - OXOOOOO - OXOOOOO - OOXOOOO - OOOOXOO - OOOOXOO - OOOOOOX

It has nothing to do with performance but just with bad math, hence being a bug.

Cheers,

M

MatzeHali wrote: ...the same bundle opened on the MacBookPro 2016 with Touch Bar and Intel Iris 550 (Mojave 10.14.6, FCPX 10.4.9) works when rendering and sharing, so it's either a Catalina or a MacPro problem...

Is the 5 min. material 100% generated by animation or are there any video source files? If you have any H264 video files, the 8-core "trash can" Mac Pro has no hardware acceleration for that, and it's commonly reported that an older MacBook Pro laptop can do certain tasks faster or smoother.

However once exported, the ProRes 4444 file should be smooth -- if it's smooth within FCPX -- unless it's on a slower external hard drive. The data rate of 4k ProRes 4444 is very high.

Again, it's not about performance of playback, but of render quality. When playback without rendering it's fine, but it get's problematic when sharing or exporting.
Not about speed!
About quality!

There is no difference if the animation is on top of footage or without any footage applied.

MatzeHali wrote: ...

With the shared file or rendered timeline I would get:

XOOOOOO - OXOOOOO - OXOOOOO - OOXOOOO - OOOOXOO - OOOOXOO - OOOOOOX...

This looks similar to a rate conforming issue. What is the frame rate of the project, and what is the frame rate of each video clip, title, or animation item? For each of those, select them one at a time, then look in the Inspector under the "i" tab. If they are not all the same frame rate or an even multiple thereof, such "micro stutters" can happen.

I don't know why it would appear only in rendered output, but the 1st step is check the frame rate of each item vs. the project frame rate.

Also, what software is producing the animation? If a plugin or 3rd party effect, what is it?

Well, the animation is a motion preset just simple animation of text, nothing fancy.
Tracking animated, and a little position.

I thought the same, thinking, how is the motion preset locked into a frame rate, but since it rendered correctly with the exact same software version FCPX10.4.9 on a different machine, it's obviously some kind of bug, so let's wait if Apple ever addresses this, or if I will need to keep sharing projects from my little MacBookPro instead of the much faster MacPro.

Cheers,

M