Quicktime Choppy but FCPX seems smooth?

Hi all,

Posted here before about my drone footage, but wanted to follow up as i am still getting the same issue.  I have a MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2020, Four Thunderbolt 3 ports). 32 GB 3733 MHz LPDDR4X with Intel Iris Plus Graphics 1536 MB. I am feeling very frustrated as my DJI Mini 2 Drone footage is all choppy when I play it back on my Mac. I have no idea if this is a faulty drone or a faulty Mac... I spent $2700 on this Macbook about 6 months ago.. 

If I watch the footage on my 5-year-old 4k Samsung TV, it is smooth, it is also much smoother if I add the video files into FCPX as "optimized media" and play it back...But, if I try and play the raw clips in Quicktime, VLC player, or any other media player that I have tried for that matter, they are extremely jittery and choppy. My SS is at 1/60 and I am filming in 4k 30FPS. 

Can anyone share some insight and a potential resolution to my issue? Is my new mac not powerful enough? Why would it play smoother in optimized media but not in quick time?  what would you suggest? 

All files are saved locally to my downloads folder.

Thanks so much!

Certain variations of h.264 can be more problematic than others, assuming that is the codec your drone records in.  I would think your MacBook Pro would handle that without much trouble, especially at 30p and not 60p (which could prove to be even more difficult).  That said, if you are playing it back from your system drive and that is an ssd, it is likely the flavor of h.264 causing the sluggish performance.  If your system drive is pretty full, that could also be the issue.  Have you tried playing it back from a fast external ssd to see if that helps?
As far as using optimized media when playing back in FCP, that is exactly the purpose of using optimized media.  It allows the computer to provide better playback performance because it creates a prores version of the footage which basically doesn't have to be decompressed on the fly as you play and scrub through the footage.  The files are massive in comparison to your originals, but the compressed originals have to be decompressed in real time as you play them back, hence the stuttering when using non-optimized media.

Thank you for your quick response. I haven't tried playing back from an External SSD. I don't actually own one of those, but I may have to try playback on a friend's computer and see if I get the same results. Oddly enough, I still get the issue, even when I export the FCPX project as Apple ProRes. The file size does indeed become massive, but I still have that jitter. Seems the only way to avoid it is playback in FCPX which seems to help significantly.

Here is a short clip of me moving the drone up and rotating it in Cine mode. this shows as jittery, laggy, and snappy on my Macbook in Quicktime, but it shows as smoother with some motion blur in FCPX. Do you see the lag/jitter in the clip? Only way to describe it is it feels as though my eyes are seeing every frame sharply. May need to download the file to see in full res 4k. Thanks again!

www.dropbox.com/s/wdtoyfciyldiom9/Untitled.mp4?dl=0

It almost sounds like your project in FCP is a different frame rate than your recorded footage. Please confirm your project settings and also it would help if you can check your recorded media in a program like mediaInfo or invisor and post the details.

Also, did you retime the footage at all in FCP?  I checked your clip on my iPhone and it plays perfectly smooth. I can download it later when I am in the studio and take a closer look at the details but I am out for most of the day. 

This is what it looks like actually. It looks very similar to the frame rate issues you see in Youtube examples, but FCPX is set to the correct frame rate. Also, the footage raw and straight off the SD is like it, before it has even touched FCPX. I am wondering if I have a faulty drone.. but it is hard to tell as I can't test the footage on any other device but my television. 

I can't say I see any jerking in the video on my MBP in the QT player. There's a slight shift occasionally near the beginning, but that just looks like a little platform instability, and the movement is smooth, not as if it's skipping.