4K downscaling to 1080p problem

Question

Level 1

8 points

4K downscaling to 1080p problem

Hi,

I have 4k footage from a Sony FS5 and A6500 which I'm trying to downscale to 1080p in FCPX, but the resulting footage looks about half the resolution of 1080p - what could I be doing wrong?!

I'm importing the footage as normal, setting my project to a 1080p format with ProRes 422 rendering, and the 4k footage that renders out looks terrible. I thought downscaled footage of this nature was supposed to retain the detail and sharpness when looking at it on a normal size screen, in this case a Macbook.

Would greatly appreciate any help with this!

Final Cut Pro X, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)

Posted on Sep 12, 2017 4:57 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 13, 2017 12:53 AM in response to markvid

It should work perfectly.

Things to look out for: do you have your viewer set to High Quality or Better Performance? Are you using proxy media?

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Answer 2

Sep 13, 2017 2:21 AM in response to markvid

The downscaled 4K material should look just as good or a little better than a comparable 1080p shot.

Is there a chance you could post a small snippet of 4K original material in dropbox or similar so we can test?

This would help figure out if it is something peculiar with the footage or some issue in your software.

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Answer 3

Sep 13, 2017 3:57 AM in response to markvid

In order to look for a possible software conflict, please run the diagnostic tool Etrecheck and post its report here.

(Etrecheck is a utility by a respected member of this community that gives us info about the hardware and software installation, so we can have a chance to look for possible causes of problems; it does not install anything else in your mac, nor does it publish any private information).

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Answer 4

Sep 13, 2017 2:08 AM in response to markvid

I wonder if it is a display issue or more than that. If you mark an In and Out point and share a small region to ProRes, does the output also look bad?

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Answer 5

Sep 13, 2017 3:43 AM in response to markvid

Yes, I could download your example.

I imported it, put it in a 1080p project and it worked fine, so the footage is fine.

At the moment, no idea what may be happening differently in your mac to make it terrible... scratching my head over this. What is your mac model, OS and FCP X versions?

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Answer 6

markvid Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 13, 2017 2:58 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Hi - Could you give me your email so I can let you download the clip from the shared Dropbox folder?

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Answer 7

markvid Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 13, 2017 2:05 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Hi Luis,

I have my viewer set to 'High Quality' and I'm using 'Optimized/Original' media, but still it produces this blurry lo-res footage.

Are there any other settings that can affect the quality of the output?

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Answer 8

markvid Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 13, 2017 2:17 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

I've just tried that, and there's no difference in the quality - it's still just as bad.

I'm right in thinking that the downscaled 4k footage should look just as good as the original yeah? There should be no drop in quality?!

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Answer 9

markvid Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 13, 2017 3:48 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Thank you for your continued help with this!

It's good to know that the footage is ok, so it's problem with my system most likely?

I'm running FCP X 10.3.4 on a Macbook Pro Retina OSX El Capitan 10.11.6, with 16GB of RAM

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Answer 10

markvid Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 13, 2017 4:02 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

EtreCheck version: 3.4.4 (448)

Report generated 2017-09-13 12:01:38

Download EtreCheck from https://etrecheck.com

Runtime: 1:48

Performance: Excellent

Click the [Lookup] links for more information from Apple Support Communities.

Click the [Details] links for more information about that line.

Problem: Other problem

Description:

Final Cut Pro rendering poor quality footage when downscaling 4K video clips to 1080p HD

Hardware Information:ⓘ

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)

[Technical Specifications] - [User Guide] - [Warranty & Service]

MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro11,2

1 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7 (i7-4770HQ) CPU: 4-core

16 GB RAM Not upgradeable

BANK 0/DIMM0

8 GB DDR3 1600 MHz ok

BANK 1/DIMM0

8 GB DDR3 1600 MHz ok

Handoff/Airdrop2: supported

Wireless: en0: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac

Battery: Health = Normal - Cycle count = 417

Video Information:ⓘ

Intel Iris Pro - VRAM: 1536 MB

Color LCD 2880 x 1800

Cinema HD 1920 x 1200

Disk Information:ⓘ

APPLE SSD SM0256F disk0: (251 GB) (Solid State - TRIM: Yes)

[Show SMART report]

(disk0s1) <not mounted> [EFI]: 210 MB

(disk0s2) <not mounted> [CoreStorage Container]: 250.14 GB

(disk0s3) <not mounted> [Recovery]: 650 MB

USB Information:ⓘ

USB30Bus 2 TB

Seagate Expansion Desk 2 TB

Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad

Apple Inc. BRCM20702 Hub

Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller

Thunderbolt Information:ⓘ

Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus

Virtual disks:ⓘ

Macintosh HD (disk1 - Journaled HFS+) / [Startup]: 249.80 GB (33.29 GB free)

Encrypted AES-XTS (Unlocked)

Physical disk: disk0s2 250.14 GB Online

11.1 (disk3s2 - Journaled HFS+) /Volumes/11.1 : 2.00 TB (1.43 TB free)

Physical disk: Expansion Desk 2.00 TB (1.43 TB free)

System Software:ⓘ

OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 (15G1611) - Time since boot: about 10 days

Gatekeeper:ⓘ

Mac App Store and identified developers

Kernel Extensions:ⓘ

/Applications/Capture One 9.app

[not loaded] com.Leaf.driver.LeafFwXDriverMatcher (1.2.0d1) [Lookup]

/System/Library/Extensions

[not loaded] com.sony.driver.dsccamDeviceInfo00 (1.3.0.06030 - SDK 10.10) [Lookup]

System Launch Agents:ⓘ

[not loaded] 7 Apple tasks

[loaded] 144 Apple tasks

[running] 88 Apple tasks

System Launch Daemons:ⓘ

[not loaded] 47 Apple tasks

[loaded] 146 Apple tasks

[running] 98 Apple tasks

Launch Agents:ⓘ

[not loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2017-06-10) [Lookup]

[failed] com.adobe.ARMDCHelper.cc24aef4a1b90ed56a725c38014c95072f92651fb65e1bf9c8e43c37a2 3d420d.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2017-01-12) [Lookup]

[running] com.adobe.AdobeCreativeCloud.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2017-06-09) [Lookup]

Launch Daemons:ⓘ

[running] com.adobe.ARMDC.Communicator.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2017-01-12) [Lookup]

[running] com.adobe.ARMDC.SMJobBlessHelper.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2017-01-12) [Lookup]

[loaded] com.adobe.SwitchBoard.plist (? 856489a3 0 - installed 2015-02-01) [Lookup]

[running] com.adobe.adobeupdatedaemon.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2017-06-09) [Lookup]

[running] com.adobe.agsservice.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2017-05-29) [Lookup]

[loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist (? 2afb3af7 4898e928 - installed 2017-08-29) [Lookup]

User Launch Agents:ⓘ

[loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist (Adobe Systems, Inc. - installed 2016-08-30) [Lookup]

[loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist (Google, Inc. - installed 2017-07-10) [Lookup]

[running] com.spotify.webhelper.plist (Spotify - installed 2017-09-03) [Lookup]

User Login Items:ⓘ

iTunesHelper Application (Apple, Inc. - installed 2017-09-13)

(/Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunesHelper.app)

Spotify Application - Hidden

(/Applications/Spotify.app)

AdobeResourceSynchronizer Application - Hidden

(/Applications/Adobe Acrobat Reader DC.app/Contents/Helpers/AdobeResourceSynchronizer.app)

HP Device Monitor SMLoginItem - Hidden (Hewlett Packard - installed 2017-06-01)

(/Library/Printers/hp/Frameworks/HPDeviceMonitoring.framework/Versions/1.0/Help ers/HP Device Monitor Manager.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/HP Device Monitor.app)

Photo Stream URL SMLoginItem - Hidden (Apple, Inc. - installed 2038-01-19)

(/Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/PhotoStreamAgent.app)

com.adobe.SwitchBoard.monitor.plist MachInit - Hidden

(/etc/mach_init_per_user.d/com.adobe.SwitchBoard.monitor.plist)

Mach Init items are deprecated

Internet Plug-ins:ⓘ

AdobeExManDetect: AdobeExManDetect 1.1.0.0 (installed 2015-02-24) [Lookup]

AdobeAAMDetect: 3.0.0.0 (installed 2017-06-09) [Lookup]

QuickTime Plugin: 7.7.3 (installed 2017-08-16)

AdobePDFViewerNPAPI: 17.012.20098 (installed 2017-09-03) [Lookup]

Flash Player: 27.0.0.130 (installed 2017-09-13) [Lookup]

AdobePDFViewer: 17.012.20098 (installed 2017-09-03) [Lookup]

Default Browser: 601 (installed 2016-08-10)

FlashPlayer-10.6: 27.0.0.130 (installed 2017-09-13) [Lookup]

PMCADownloader: 1.3.0.06130 (installed 2016-06-13) [Lookup]

Silverlight: 5.1.50901.0 (installed 2016-11-15) [Lookup]

User internet Plug-ins:ⓘ

npVidyoWeb-x86-00088: VidyoWeb 1.2.0.00088 (installed 2015-07-07) [Lookup]

3rd Party Preference Panes:ⓘ

Flash Player (installed 2017-08-29) [Lookup]

FUSE (installed 2017-03-15) [Lookup]

Time Machine:ⓘ

Time Machine not configured!

Top Processes by CPU:ⓘ

10% WindowServer

2% kernel_task

1% CalendarAgent

0% fontd

0% Adobe CEF Helper

Top Processes by Memory:ⓘ

1.36 GB kernel_task

1.21 GB Final Cut Pro

737 MB com.apple.WebKit.WebContent

351 MB com.apple.WebKit.WebContent

305 MB Safari

Top Processes by Energy Use:ⓘ

9.16 WindowServer

0.82 Adobe CEF Helper

0.64 Spotify

0.36 Creative Cloud

Virtual Memory Information:ⓘ

5.86 GB Available RAM

1.42 GB Free RAM

10.14 GB Used RAM

4.44 GB Cached files

956 MB Swap Used

Software installs:ⓘ

Adobe Acrobat Reader DC (17.012.20095): (installed 2017-08-16)

FilmConvert 2.21 - Final Cut Pro: (installed 2017-08-19)

Sony FS 5: (installed 2017-08-19)

PlayMemories Camera Apps Downloader: (installed 2017-09-03)

Adobe Acrobat Reader DC (17.012.20098): (installed 2017-09-03)

Adobe Flash Player: (installed 2017-09-13)

Install information may not be complete.

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Answer 11

markvid Author

Level 1

8 points

Sep 13, 2017 5:00 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

Hi Tom,

But the 'HD' footage that it's downscaling to from the 4K files looks noticeably worse than a native 1080p HD file.

Am I not right in expecting downscaled 4K files to look just as good as HD files, as opposed to worse?

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Answer 12

Sep 13, 2017 6:53 AM in response to markvid

The report seems relatively clean.

I wonder about the Sony software - you probably don't need it; and though it could have nothing to do with the problem, it is about the only thing that stands out as possibly related.

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