Deinterlacing issues in FCPX 10.4 HELP!!!

Deinterlacing should be taken care of automatically by FCPX. That said, it's easy to screw it up.

The first thing a lot of people do is try to lie to FCPX and indicate that video clips are something other than what they really are. For instance: going into Settings and setting Field Dominance Override to Progressive or another incorrect option.

If you created a project with the "First Drop" option, then applying interlaced media will create an interlaced project no matter if you "ticked" Deinterlace in settings.

Interlaced media will ALWAYS look terrible on a computer, no matter what. It is designed for old-fashioned CRT television sets. It is now a years old legacy and should be considered *obsolete*.

If you're working with interlaced media, you must manually set up a progressive project. If you're working with interlaced media, then the Field Dominance must be correctly identified (FCPX often may do this automatically - but not always - it must be checked.)

IF your original media is DV (or any variation thereof), DVD, or MPEG2, the Field Dominance is always Lower First. For all other codecs, it's Upper First. Getting the wrong dominance setting will exacerbate the problem, to the point that the video will appear to go forward on one frame and jump backwards on the subsequent frame.

If you set up your project as progressive and correctly set your field dominance, you should NOT need to "tick" Deinterlace at all, (although you may need to if trying to conform to a very different frame rate.)

Since the 10.4 update, I've been reading how a lot of people have been working with FCPX in Sierra. That was not the case for me. I cannot claim with any certainty that upgrading to HS will actually solve your problems. Upgrading solved mine.

When I installed FCPX 10.4 and Motion 5.4 (while still running Sierra) I had waited several days before upgrading as I had heard it was supposed to be compatible — I was waiting for reports of the "fallout". I spent all of 20 minutes with FCPX and Motion after upgrading and couldn't do anything with either one — they were both disasters. I don't remember specific problems, just that their behaviors were completely unacceptable to me. At that point, I was aware that Apple was "recommending" upgrading to HS but that FCPX "should" be compatible with Sierra. I rapidly came to the conclusion it wasn't, at least, not for this Mac [2013 27" iMac NVIDIA 780M 4G gpu].

Upgrading to HS solved nearly all my issues. There was still this "thing" where Motion would "hang" for several minutes before continuing. It was the most ridiculous hang - usually simply trying to reset an object's "position". It would only happen once per "session", so not a big deal — most of the time I just put up with it. A couple of times, I did force quit and report the issue. I have believed for some time now that Apple pushes minor fixes (I'll probably get tagged for being crazy for this... LOL – don't care). I've actually not noticed Motion hanging for a little while now... There's no other explanation for the difference in behavior.

I can remember only one other time when upgrading FCPX gave me problems (10.0.6 I think). Not once, ever, has deleting preferences ever helped (me). However, a "clean" install (I'll usually zip up FCPX, Motion and/or Logic and delete the apps before re-installing), usually does help out, especially for the more major updates. [If you have important projects in a library, make sure you duplicate your library on a different drive (or zip up a copy) in case you have to replace it if you decide to roll back your install.] I did not have to reinstall FCPX or Motion after upgrading the OS to HS. Since upgrading to HS, FCPX and Motion have been quite stable (other than the... temporary... issue I mentioned above).

Make sure your Mac is compatible with HS before upgrading.

HTH

Are you using Sierra or High Sierra? I had all kinds of trouble with FCPX and Motion in Sierra that simply went away when I upgraded to HS.

What are the exact clip and project settings? What are you exporting to?

Oh... interlaced. Why don’t you just die?