Adjusting Preview Quality in Final Cut

[alanchrishughes]

my imac crashed on me and was trying to edit some hd ish on my baby mac book which is no where near powerful enough. ive read every single page on google but i cant figure out how to adjust the preview quality. i have ajdjusted the preview window size all the way down to 12% but it still jumps frames.

[cj miller]

its on the left top corner of the timeline window under the safe / unlimited RT pull down menu i believe. I think there is another place also to do it I just can't think of it off the top of head. If im making shit up, which I have done before (lol) check out these forums. www.2-pop.com very helpful when troubleshooting FCP issues.

[cj miller]

also you should check the box "not to warn again" when the drop frame warning window pops up. fuck it edit with choppy video, i've done it many times.

[alanchrishughes]

yeah tried to just say fuck it and roll past the jumped frames but it tends to only do it (and very badly) when a clip starts or ends, which basically defeats the purpose of editing.

i've looked at that top left corner of the timeline before but it never had any options. i created a new project which defaults to an SD preset and suddenly there were options. i changed the settings for hd, and suddenly the options were gone, wtf apple!?

[cj miller]

which version of FCP are you using? you should be able to create a new project with any presets. Then drop in a clip into the timline and fcp will promt a window asking if you would like to change the seq to the clip settings which is almost always a "yes". then are the options there? i see the options always....could be a bug i guess in which case you need to delete your FCP presets which i dont really want to explain right now but sometimes it help "resetting" FCP so things work again.

[JZalutsky]

on the top left of the timeline there is a pop down menu labled RT there is low/med/high and dynamic quality and frame rate options. for future reference you can just search the final cut help im sure and itll tell you. or download a pdf of the manual.

[alanchrishughes]

well like i said i tried all that obvious stuff but didn't find anything, and the RT options for some reason disappeared for my hd timelines, but jeff kolada pointed out to me that final cut doesn't get along with h.264 files for some reason so ive been trying to find something that does

[cj miller]

nothing is going to handle h.264 files really. It's not an editing codec, more a delivery codec. Convert to proress 422 HQ and it's smooth sailing

[alanchrishughes]

ya that was what jeff suggested but the files come out a lot darker and are literally 4 times the size

im using "MPEG Streamclip"
http://www.squared5.com/

im almost tempted to just convert them to hdv files because they look good, but are half the size afterwards and im sure im loosing quality somewhere doing this

[cj miller]

what are you planning as a deliverable? DVD, Web?
Either way you're going to have to downres eventually.

Yeah proress does darken during conversion, but sometimes not enough to not use it. That may not be your case.

I don't recommend HDV for quality reasons, but if it is looking ok to you on your system, go for it.

Since you have FCP you could always do a batch export from there and convert them to proress and see if you're still getting a super dark conversion.

Mpeg streamclip is a great GREAT program, and it's free :)
I would say though that it wont do as good of a job as FCP or Compressor, but I use it alot for lower budget type stuff.

[JZalutsky]

if there isn't setting listed under rt you have a problem with fcp and you need to reinstall....I cant think of a reason why it wouldn't be there unless it is related to the fact your using h.264 files.


and yes you cant edit h.264 proper you need to transcode...


transcode to pro res LT btw....HQ is for footage with a orginal bitrate over 100mbs....its for fancy stuff....if your shooting with a camera going to h.264 you deff dont need pro res hq...itll save you space, run faster, and look the same.

[alanchrishughes]

i have the rt options for hdv timelines or sd timelines, but when i drop a 7d clip in a new timeline and let final cut configure the settings for me it disappears. it also creates a 1080i timeline when im shooting 24p, and it doesn't have any 24p options until i export, but then it looks all kinds of pixelated.

the h.264 files still look the best, prores hq a little worse, prores a little worse

i was considering trying to do the offline thing, but dropping pro res files into the h.264 timeline constantly took forever to render and rendering h.264 files from a pro res timeline looked really pixelated too

and then i got stuck in traffic this morning as was late to work and.......oh, my bad

</crying>

[cj miller]

I can walk you through the offline - online process. Send me a PM and well talk about it over the phone.
It is the best workflow for keeping your final at highest possible res and not killing your system while editing.

[alanchrishughes]

i dont have a phone actually, im cheap and would rather waste my money on camera stuff haha. i understand the process of how to "offline" clips, its just finding the timeline settings that will work. like i said either i edit the prorese clips in the h.264 timeline, but that takes forever to render everything, or edit prores clips in a prores timeline then switch out/offline the prores clips for the full quality h.264 clips, but rendering them out of a prores timline makes it look even worse than just using the prores files. i guess i havent tried changing the actual timeline settings at the end, but that will probably have a lot of problems too, final cut will probably think it is still dealing with prores files.

[cj miller]

you should offline to a much more compressed codec than prores, and a little smaller frame would help also. Really in your offline you want things to fly without struggle or whats really the point?

online - h264, with h264 timeline
convert all files to something small while keeping some quality, without changing any names
offline - use the converted small compressed clips to edit in a timeline which matches the clips, you want no render at all at this point
create or convert the timeline to your online setiings, relink media to your h264. export. done.

[JZalutsky]

^that is just an awful idea haha...online offline h.264 footage....


the reason the files suck isnt cause they are intensive its because you cant edit compressed h.264 video.


convert to pro res, if you see a quality degradation your doing something wrong. Pro Res is a far higher bit rate then what you get off a markII....which is why you are supposed to use pro res LT....HQ is for over 100mbs....the mark II isnt even close to that.


you dont drop the pro res in the h.264 timeline....if you have to render a clip in fcp with nothing on it something is wrong...always. start a new sequence and drop a pro res clip in to it and fcp will prompt you to auto change sequence settings to pro res. sequence settings need to match the footage format.

[alanchrishughes]

what program would you suggest using to convert to prores? i figured if converting to prores made it look worse and are 4 times larger file sizes, why not just offline it to keep the same quality, its not like converting to prores or any other file type is going to improve quality.

[cj miller]

use FCP.

put all your h264 clips in a bin. right click > batch export > adjust setting to something your comp can smoothly handle. edit your offline with those clips.