Q: Can Final Cut Pro x edit 4k video
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Jun 23, 2015 1:16 AMby Karsten Schlüter,aside what Tony said (vibrations), most cases of 'un-smoothness' are simply based upon wrong selection of shutter-speed/missing motion blur.
A (Moving) Picture tells more than a thousand words from me, have a look and try diff. settings
https://frames-per-second.appspot.com/
Even 60fps can not 'guarantee' a smooth viewing experience...
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Jun 23, 2015 3:36 AMby Gary Kissler,Karsten,
Over the past few days, I have tried shooting video with the Phantom 3 Professional at several settings. With the 4K, you can choose from several fps options. But you can also shift to 1080 and go up to 60 frames per second. I did notice some improvement at 60 but am still confused as to why so many other people seem to be able to take video that is incredibly smooth compared to what I get.
Aside from the reason you mentioned, I have read that some people favor .mp4 over .mov so I tried this and can't see much difference. Other people have suggested that there is not enough memory but my Mac Pro has 8GM and has worked fine with video editing. And, of course, some people prefer different editing software.
I will certainly give the 1080 another try. It is actually 1920x1080 at 60fps. The 4K was 3840x2160 at 30fps.
If you have further suggestions, I would welcome them as this has proven to be incredibly frustrating! Thanks.
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Jun 23, 2015 3:40 AMby Gary Kissler,Tony,
Thank you for the reply. My confusion is over why the examples of video shot by many other people with their Phantom 3 Professional devices appears to much smoother than mine. I use Final Cut Pro X and did try to use the smoothing feature. But I saw very little (if any) improvement. So this is raising more questions. From reading through various posts online, other people cite the choice of 4K or 1080 and then there is the frame per second choice. But even other suggest that the computer may lack sufficient memory to process the video and even others prefer a different editing software application.
I am currently working through most, if not all, of these suggestions. But I keep hoping that someone has come up with a "Mac" set of choices that would match my situation. If you have further suggestions, I would really appreciate it. Thanks.
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Jun 23, 2015 5:20 AMby Karsten Schlüter,Gary Kissler wrote:
..... If you have further suggestions, I would welcome them as this has proven to be incredibly frustrating!First, follow advice/plea of Russ - share a few seconds of your footage, so we can discuss what 'smoothness' your missing.
Second, I'm stubborn: lower your shutter speeds (probably you have to use an NDfilter, to come close to 1/50th - 1/100th
All 'hints' you're mentioning are ... should I really write nonsense ?
mp4 is just a container - has no effect on pic quaity
Mac can't handle 4k? omg, my tiny 2012 MacMini can handle 4 streams of 4k in a Mutlicam ...
any other hardware suggestions: quality is judged only with 'finalized' project, an exported file ... so, 'bang' of your GPU, size of your RAM, speed of hard-drives - don't matter for final, consolidated export.
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Jun 23, 2015 9:24 AMby TomWheel,Gary,
I have a Phantom 3 Pro and I have shot and edited in FCP X a good bit of footage in 4K using the Phantom 3 Pro's camera. I feel it is quite steady, and in fact, I was amazed that I did not need to apply any stabilization whatsoever to the h.264 footage shot by the Phantom 3 Pro. Here is a link to the first two flights of my Phantom 3 Pro in 4K and edited in FCP X: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdBhNecwfdE. It should be clear what footage was shot by the Phantom 3 Pro's 4K camera and the remainder of the footage of the Phantom 3 Pro itself was shot in 4K with a Samsung NX-1. None of the footage shot with the Phantom 3 Pro's 4K camera was stabilized in this clip whereas all of the handheld 4K footage shot with the Samsung NX-1 was stabilized in FCP X..
The Phantom 3 Pro is shooting 4K footage in h.264 which my Late 2013 model Mac Pro is able to handle without converting it to a more edit friendly format, e.g. Apple's Pro Res 422. I suggest that you try converting your footage to Pro Res 422 or 42HQ and then ingesting that optimized footage into FCP X. I believe that your computer will have a much easier time playing back that footage than the native h.264 captured by the Phantom 3 Pro's 4K camera.
Tom
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Jun 23, 2015 1:12 PMby TomWheel,Ian,
Thank you for your comments.
At 72, I have seen a lot in technology that I could never have imagined would occur in my lifetime. We are truly blessed to have the quality of digital cameras and electronics that we have today. If someone had told me how stable and how high the quality of the 4K footage from the tiny camera on the Phantom 3 Pro could be, I doubt that I would have believed them. It truly is like taking video on a very very tall tripod. I just wish that people who fly these drones will use good judgement and not fly over people or buildings. I am very careful to fly my Phantom 3 Pro only in places where I will not overfly people or homes. No technology is infallible, and I never forget that when flying.
It is the dreams that keep us young...
Tom
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Jun 24, 2015 4:05 AMby Gary Kissler,I would like to thank everyone who has responded to my questions and wanted to give an update on the "solution" I am about to pursue. After a lengthy discussion with a technician at the Other World Computing web site, I am beginning to believe that the issue has to do with the video card I have in my Mac Pro. Let me explain what brought me to this conclusion.
As I have explained before, when I imported the video material from the Phantom 3 Professional quadcopter, I was disappointed in its "jerky" appearance. After a lot of attempts to deal with this, I decided to see if I saw the same thing on other devices. So I viewed this on my iPhone 6 Plus, my wife's iPad mini, and her Macbook laptop. In all cases the video material was dramatically smoother in appearance.
I checked her laptop specs and saw that her RAM was less and the CPU speed was comparable. But the video card appeared to have more capacity. This brought me to a web search on video cards and I noticed that several reviews all mentioned Other World Computing as a good source. I reviewed their products that matched my Mac Pro and then got involved with an online "chat" with one of their technicians.
After reviewing everything that has happened, he suggested that it was not limited RAM causing this issue but more likely the video card. My current video card is an ATI Radeon HD 5870. The technician recommended a Sapphire HD 7950 Mac Edition. So, I am about to order this video card and we'll see how it goes.
Had I not seen such dramatic improvement in the video material on other devices, I might have just tried to increase RAM. Anyway, that's where things stand. I would like to also comment on the Codec suggestion. This is something I would likely pursue if the video card attempt fails. I'll try to get back after I take the next step. I have not converted from one codec to another but that is a hill I will certainly be willing to climb.
Again, thanks to everyone for taking time on this subject. It was truly appreciated.
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Jun 24, 2015 4:49 AMby Ian R. Brown,I know nothing about your video card but I suspect you may be throwing money at a problem that does not require it . . . maybe someone with more knowledge of video cards can comment.
I'm worried that after buying a new card you may well find the problem persists.
It's quite possible the trouble lies in your workflow, but as you have not detailed exactly what you are doing it's impossible to tell.
Jerky playback whilst editing is not necessarily a problem, apart from being irritating.
Frequently you find that once rendered and exported, the final video is perfect.
