TOPIC:

Hi there,

This feels like a really stupid question and I am probably overlooking something but when I have a clip in either a sequence or a compound clip with a title over it (using them as subtitles), the quality in the viewer and via A/V output (Ultrastudio Monitor 3G) becomes very pixelated.

I am working in proxy mode because I first imported 4k source clips, and after that attached the proxy files. I would like to be able to work in Proxy mode for a responsive timeline. Is working in this mode causing the pixelated image? Or do I need to work in Optimized / Original with quality set to Better Quality for the image to view normally? And if yes, is there a way to force FCP to high quality playback when in Proxy mode? (I'm on 10.6.5)
My proxy clips are on a fast ssd drive, while the originals are on a spinning disk...

The raster dimensions of the compound clips and sequences are 1920x1080.
Synced via Sync-N-Link X with Alternate frame size box also set to 1920x1080.
"Make wrapped Video clips at a different frame size" box left checked off.

Thanks in advance,
Erik

Proxy media is a smaller, more junkified and lest robust files than the original media, thus the reason to use it where quality on playback isn't as important as is the ability to play files true time where without proxy things may be stuttering due to loads placed on the hardware.Switch back to using ORIGINAL media and things will once again look beautiful but won't have decent playback.

You'll get smoother playback editing in PROXY on limited hardware but remember to change back to Optimized/Original before export or your video will be mastered using the junk files instead of the ones you intended.

Hi VTC, thanks for the info.

But I don't understand why even after rendering it looks pixelated when set to proxy, because the timeline is set to render in 1080p ProRes LT which even old apple systems are capable of showing properly with ease.

It's a bit of a letdown that when you have a Proxy mode which allows you to work very easily with light material outside of the office (where the originals are), that you cannot preview a non-pixelated image just because you don't have those at hand.

Can you post some screenshots of what you’re seeing?

Erik wrote:

But I don't understand why even after rendering it looks pixelated when set to proxy,..

Because you're still telling FCP to use the less-than-dignified proxy files to render other than the original files. For a test export the 1st five minutes of the PROXY setting then five minutes of the ORIGINAL settings and you'll see the difference.

Exported more times than I care to admit PROXY settings to discover the error at the end of a 2 hour export. (Motto around here seems to be 'If it hasn't been done twice then it hasn't been done correctly.')

No I understand, but what I meant was that choosing proxy or original should only affect which source file you are currently using, not the render / preview quality. It would be nice if you can still choose a relatively decent looking render setting while in proxy mode, so that when you only have a disk with proxies at hand you can have a more proper estimation of what the image will look like.
Btw the export with titles (using the proxy files) looks hell of a lot better than when scrubbing through the timeline in proxy mode (even when everything is rendered).
@ Tom Wolsky, see attachments for what I am seeing.

Erik wrote:

...choosing proxy or original should only affect which source file you are currently using, not the render / preview quality. It would be nice if you can still choose a relatively decent looking render setting while in proxy mode, so that when you only have a disk with proxies at hand you can have a more proper estimation of what the image will look like...

There are separate render files for proxy and full resolution modes. They are separate because the purpose of proxy mode is improve performance and save media space (for portable or distributed editing). It is impossible to generate higher resolution render files from lower resolution proxies.

If both proxy and full resolution media are available, there is no such thing as being in proxy mode while using full resolution media. By definition that would not be proxy mode. The very thing that makes proxy mode faster is using proxies. That means using them for reading off the disk, for decoding, for effects, for rendering, and for display. Conceptually there are two separate image processing pipelines: one for proxy and one for full resolution. There is no technical way to gain the performance benefits of proxy media while using full resolution media in the viewer.

The images certainly look soft. Often see that with proxy media.

@ Tom:
Yes it is normal for proxies to have lesser quality, but the thing for me in this case was that when I'm viewing in "proxy preferred mode", the image of the video file does not become pixelated / soft when there is no additional title graphic added. So proxy mode is able to show me an unaltered image of the attached proxy (which makes sense because it is a 1080p ProRes LT file which is not in need of rendering for previewing), but it Does become pixelated / soft when titles are added. Of course this is logical when the titles are unrendered, but if FCP is capable of showing me a clean image of a ProRes LT proxy file in proxy mode, why would it not be able to do that with titles which - even when you're in proxy mode - are rendered to the exact same resolution/codec?
(or does the render setting of your project only apply to the Optimized/Original mode? that would explain a lot)

I might not fully understand this but that doesn't change how FCP handles rendering in proxy mode. So next time I would probably import the proxy files as originals instead.

Thanks guys though for all the info!

@ joema:
Oops, missed the part about "two separate image processing pipelines".

So what you're saying is that if I set my project render settings to 1080p ProRes LT, rendering in proxy mode might be in a different resolution / codec than that (because FCP is using that setting for Optimzed/Original and not perse for proxy preferred)?

I meant that proxy mode and full-res mode are totally separate. You cannot have higher than proxy resolution in proxy mode, otherwise it would not be proxy mode. The purpose of proxies is to improve I/O and computational performance, and if FCP was handling full-res *original* media, proxy mode would have little meaning.

If the original media is (say) 4k, by default proxies are 50% or 1/2 the linear resolution which would be 1080p. FCP allows you to create 100% size proxies if you want. That could still be beneficial if the 100%-sized proxy codec is more manageable than the original same-size codec. Depending on the codec and machine specifics, that can help performance.

E.g, some variants of 4k 10-bit 4:2:2 HEVC are quite sluggish to edit. If you wanted to retain the full resolution but have better performance while editing you could use 100% (ie 4k) ProRes Proxies. That would take more space than 50% size but it would be very fast to edit. The "ProRes Proxy" encoding format is more compact than ProRes LT or ProRes 422, so it would save space over those.

In the case of difficult 8k media (e.g, REDRAW), just using normal 50% proxies would still equate to 4k, so that's good enough for almost all editing decisions.

Setting render format to (say) 1080p ProRes LT only affects the render cache files, not the proxy file size. However -- render format is a project attribute so using 1080p ProRes LT render format would require having a 1080p timeline. You can do that then copy/paste the final edit to a 4k timeline and export it. The underlying media would be 4k but you'd only see that as 1080p due to the timeline. Doing that can be a mild performance improvement in some cases. It will not help decode performance but some things can be a bit faster. It varies a lot based on machine and codec.

To clarify, I'm not talking about the visual quality of proxy files made from camera originals, but specifically about the overal image quality in the viewer in proxy mode which only looks pixelated after I add titles on top of a clip.

"Setting render format to (say) 1080p ProRes LT only affects the render cache files"
Does this mean that when I'm in proxy mode and render the titles, they are rendered as 1080p ProRes LT files?
If so, I don't fully understand why the same proxy file without that rendered title on top - which has exactly the same res/codec - is viewing without any noticeable quality loss in the viewer, and with the title it's not.

Am I doing something wrong or is this just how it works in FCP when in proxy mode? Because if so, then next time I might need to import the proxy footage as originals.

I can't reproduce this with 4K H.264 using ProRes Proxy at 50%. There is no difference in the image with or without the title that I can see. There is certainly no pixelization.

Could you post screenshots of the show the difference between the image with the title and without it?

Your images are unusually soft for proxy media from sharp 4K originals (they are not pixelated, which is something different). Could you tell us what your media and what proxy settings are you using?

Importing proxies as originals is not a good plan, as you cannot relink proxies to original media, but only to proxy files.

Erik wrote:

To clarify, I'm not talking about the visual quality of proxy files made from camera originals, but specifically about the overal image quality in the viewer in proxy mode which only looks pixelated after I add titles on top of a clip.

Your previously posted examples are labeled as two cases: non-proxy with titles that is clear and proxy with titles that is a little blurry. I did not see a posted example showing a clear proxy case without titles contrasted to a blurry proxy case with titles.

If you are saying there is a behavior where in proxy mode it is clear without titles but it becomes blurry with titles, please confirm that, then post an example in proxy mode without titles and with titles.

I just tried to reproduce this using 4k ProRes 422 original and 50% ProRes Proxies, using the built-in FCP basic titles. I don't see any abnormal pixelation effect. I was using FCP 10.6.5 and Ventura 13.2 on an M1 Ultra Mac Studio.

Are your titles built-in FCP titles are are they 3rd-party titles? If built-in titles, which ones?

Please do it with background rendering off, and in the non-rendered and rendered state. So we need to see four cases (all four in proxy mode), and all other effects removed from the test clip.

- Proxy non-rendered, no titles
- Proxy rendered, no titles
- Proxy non-rendered, with titles
- Proxy rendered, with titles

Erik wrote:

"Setting render format to (say) 1080p ProRes LT only affects the render cache files" Does this mean that when I'm in proxy mode and render the titles, they are rendered as 1080p ProRes LT files? If so, I don't fully understand why the same proxy file without that rendered title on top - which has exactly the same res/codec - is viewing without any noticeable quality loss in the viewer, and with the title it's not.

I misspoke. You actually cannot directly specify resolution of the render files, it is indirectly specified by the timeline resolution and proxy size. E.g, if original media size is 4k and you have available 50% ProRes proxies, for a 4k timeline in opt/orig mode the render file resolution will be 4k. In proxy mode render file resolution will be 1080p.

If the 4k media is in a 1080p timeline, in opt/orig mode the render file resolution will be 1080p. In proxy mode the render file resolution will be 960 x 540, or 1/2 the linear resolution of 1080p...[/quote]

I just noticed when rendering to cache a clip with the built-in FCP basic title on top, FCP creates an additional render file apparently for the title. I've never noticed that before. I thought there was a single "flattened" render file for each rendered timeline range, but apparently not in some cases.

It is difficult to inspect render files because they are in a segmented format and can't be played or viewed with normal tools. I looked up the SMPTE spec for ProRes and found how to identify the render file frame size with a hex viewer, so maybe I can deduce a bit more.

@ Tom:

Importing proxies as originals is not a good plan, as you cannot relink proxies to original media, but only to proxy files.

Thanks good to know.


@ joema:

Your previously posted examples are labeled as two cases: non-proxy with titles that is clear and proxy with titles that is a little blurry.

Sorry for the confusion.

If the 4k media is in a 1080p timeline, in opt/orig mode the render file resolution will be 1080p. In proxy mode the render file resolution will be 960 x 540, or 1/2 the linear resolution of 1080p...

This seemed to be the problem. Changing the timeline to 4K fixed it, now proxy preferred is showing me a proper image.

For me the definition of a proxy is a lower quality copy of the original, so a 3840x2160 ProRes Proxy copy made from a 3840x2160 ProRes 4444 original can still be thought of as a proxy in that sense (and for FCP this is the same), but funny enough not when previewing a proxy file in the viewer when you have a 4K original linked with a 1080p proxy, in a 1080p timeline.
I found this a bit confusing with attaching 1080p proxies, and having a 1080p timeline with render settings set to 1080p. You then would assume that what you're previewing in the viewer is a 1080p resolution, and not 960x540.
It would be nice to be able to see what resolution the proxy file is being previewed at in the viewer, not only the timeline resolution. Or to be able to set the proxy playback & render resolution like in Resolve (will provide this request to the FCP team).


Thanks a lot guys for helping out, finally seem to understand how FCP handles proxies and rendering

See attached files for the quality differences.
macOS Ventura 13.1 (Mac Studio M1 Max)
FCP 10.6.5
Built-in title used: Basic title

Put the wrong text with the wrong screencaps, but can't seem to delete them when editing the post.
"Unrendered with title" and "Unrendered without title" should be the other way around (it's late over here)