4k footage in a 1080p timeline looks blurry.
I mostly shoot and edit in 1080p, but I would like to periodically shoot in 4k and use it in my 1080p projects. There are two reasons for this:
- I'm under the impression that downsized 4k footage can sometimes look cleaner/sharper than the same footage captured in 1080p.
- I would like to occasionally create high quality zooms/pans/etc. in FCPX (I know about setting "spatial conform" to "none", etc.).
I've done a bunch of experimenting and the 4k footage on a 1080p timeline appears a bit blurry/soft both when viewing in FCPX and in the final export. I've tried downsizing my original 4k footage in Compressor and it looks much better, especially when I play with the quality settings. If I take the footage downsized in Compressor and place it in the same timeline then it looks great, but that only addresses item#1 above and creates an additional step in my workflow. I'm willing to spend the extra time for better quality, but for item#2 (zooms/pans/etc.) it's not really a solution.
Below is an image that shows what I'm talking about. The original footage was shot in 4k 100Mbps. I did not create optimized media or proxy files and simply dropped the original file into a 1080p timeline. I then took the original file and downsized it to 1080p in Compressor and placed that file into the same 1080p timeline for comparison. The image below is a screenshot from the final exported video. The export settings don't make a difference since the footage looks pretty much the same regardless of settings (as long as the bitrate is above 20Mbps). For example, a ProRes export looks visually identical to H.264 20Mbps. On the left is the 4k file dropped into a 1080p timeline. On the right is the footage downsized in Compressor:
MacBook, macOS 11.6
