drokeby

Q: Why is spatial conform of 4k footage so soft?

I am editing 4k (actually UHD) footage (from a GH4) on a 1080p timeline in the most recent version of FCPX. The conformed video is unexpectedly soft. I wrote a small program to do a simple quarter scaling that averaged the values of each group of 4 pixels to produce a 1920 x 1080 result from 3840 x 2160 which resulted in a much superior result. I am assuming FCPX is using a more complex algorithm like perhaps a Lanczos scaling method for rescaling, and perhaps that is better for non-integral rescaling, but in this soon to be pretty important usage, the result is very much inferior. Is there a hidden option to change the rescaling algorithm in FCPX? Does anyone know whether there is a workaround, like making a Motion FCPX effect to do the rescaling?

 

If not, this significantly cripples FCPX in comparison to Premiere which seems to provide the crisper downscaling of 4K that I saw also in my simple bit of code

 

Thanks

 

David Rokeby

Final Cut Pro X, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)

Posted on Jul 31, 2014 8:10 PM

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Q: Why is spatial conform of 4k footage so soft?

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  • by Guy Nisbett,

    Guy Nisbett Guy Nisbett Sep 19, 2014 5:43 AM in response to drokeby
    Level 1 (65 points)
    Sep 19, 2014 5:43 AM in response to drokeby

    FCPX does not do a particularly good job of downscaling 4K (or anything else).  It's a pity it doesn't have an option to use a higher quality scaler.  If you want to get the maximum depth out of your down-resed 4K GH4 footage, use a Lanczos transformation (or sinc for a slightly over-sharpened look, but you can't go wrong with Lanczos).  Then it will really shine.  I believe Motion or Compressor (on maximum settings) can do this, but I prefer to use Shake - it's legacy software but I trust it to handle things like this properly.

  • by Karsten Schlüter,

    Karsten Schlüter Karsten Schlüter Sep 19, 2014 6:07 AM in response to drokeby
    Level 7 (32,713 points)
    Video
    Sep 19, 2014 6:07 AM in response to drokeby

    is it just me, or does this 'better' pic look terrible over-sharpened??

     

    4k to 1080p3.jpg

     

    #1 is your Compressor result - just look at the small copy or at 'Mayham' - huuuge artificial white borders!

    Terrible! This is not optics nor resolution, that's algorithm 'sharpness'... What were your settings in Compressor??

     

    #2 is your FCPX export - which looks - imho! - 'natural'.

     

    #3 is processed in Pixelmator - I have to push the Sharpen filter beyond >10% to get the same ugly result as #1 ...

     

     

     

     

    ...

  • by imjigg,

    imjigg imjigg Sep 13, 2016 12:41 AM in response to Karsten Schlüter
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Video
    Sep 13, 2016 12:41 AM in response to Karsten Schlüter

    I'm having this same problem. :-(  Anyone have a solution to this problem?

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