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Final Cut Pro Help: SmoothCam Exporting

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Diamonds
Posts: 4443 - Karma: 1,298
So a made a small edit of a local airplane ride recently. I used the Smoothcam Plugin in FCP a lot during this edit. It was shot in 1080p on my d5100. It looks really nice when in the timeline, however, when I go to export, the quality isn't as good and there is a TON of ghosting on the SmoothCam sections. So much so that it's not even acceptable haha.

Anyways,any tips? I converted my footage to Prores before editing. I always seem to have exporting with FC haha. For this export, I've tried to export to a variety of different formats/settings and still nothing.

Thanks,
Max
Apr 3 2012 9:58PM
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1337
Posts: 31038 - Karma: 29,003
smoothcam works by cropping your video and moving it around against the shake of the camera to smooth out the footage. I'm guessing you edit at around 30% of the actual resolution so you dont notice this. Also, the ghosting is from your lens/camera/something else, unless you don't actually know what ghosting is. Steadycam can't make your footage ghost...
Apr 3 2012 10:02PM
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Downtofilm
Posts: 6896 - Karma: 20,399
It can actually, it happened to me. Make sure to turn off frame blending.
Apr 3 2012 10:14PM
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1337
Posts: 31038 - Karma: 29,003
oh shit i forgot about the frame blending. I just opened up FCP to play around with it. yup turn that off for sure, it does nothing w/ smoothcam
Apr 3 2012 10:21PM
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eheath
Posts: 61107 - Karma: 118,293
Its hard to get around the resolution loss with smoothcam. I tried putting 1080 footage in a 720 timeline to see if i could fix that but it didnt work :(
Apr 3 2012 10:27PM
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Diamonds
Posts: 4443 - Karma: 1,298
DTF's technique definitely helped. Thanks man!

Also, to Evan,

When you play back in FCP, does the quality seem better than when you export it or does it just seem to get worse once you apply the SmoothCam plugin?
Apr 3 2012 10:38PM
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eheath
Posts: 61107 - Karma: 118,293
definitely notice in the timeline. you gotta remember, you're probably viewing your edit at < 50% in fcp then when you watch after you export, its 100% or more if you full screen.
Apr 3 2012 10:42PM
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blatt
Posts: 5584 - Karma: 3,097
>edit in 1080
>export in 720
>???
>Profit?

kinda shooting from the hip there. as long as it doesnt crop past 33% you should be golden on ns since its max resolution support is 720p
Apr 4 2012 12:52AM
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eheath
Posts: 61107 - Karma: 118,293
doesnt matter, it still exports 1080 then makes it 720 which is just the 1080 scaled down so it still has low resolution.
Apr 4 2012 12:57AM
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Brock.
Posts: 5698 - Karma: 1,327
Aside from frame bending, there is an array of different settings within the filter (most of which I don't know the function) that you can change. One will help reduce the crop, but at the cost of altering the smoothness. Im not sure what all of them do, but playing around for a bit and you might reach something that works out.

Definitely get rid of the frame blending.
Apr 4 2012 6:52PM
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Totes_Magotes
Posts: 2259 - Karma: 870
Wow, just about to make a thread about this but here we are... Anyway, one more question:
I exported in AppleProRes 422 LT and have about a 10 second clip. Smoothcam works really well for it but it takes about 20 hours to render that tiny little section. Obviously something is off but I'm not sure how to fix it.
+K
Apr 4 2012 7:27PM
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eheath
Posts: 61107 - Karma: 118,293
If you're in the correct sequence and the clip is analyzed, it shouldn't take longer than like 5 min to render.
Apr 4 2012 7:32PM
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Diamonds
Posts: 4443 - Karma: 1,298
Still getting "ghosting" frames when exporting :(
Apr 4 2012 7:34PM
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Totes_Magotes
Posts: 2259 - Karma: 870
I totally misspoke. The render is not what's taking the time, it's the analyzing itself. How long should a smooth cam analysis take on a 1080 clip in the right sequence and everything?
Apr 4 2012 7:45PM
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eheath
Posts: 61107 - Karma: 118,293
like 10 mins max, i mean it depends on how long the OG clip is too. If your original clip is longer than 15 seconds, export the 10 sec clip you want and put it back in fcp to analyze because fcp analyzes the entire clip.
Apr 4 2012 8:06PM
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mammothpunks
Posts: 5724 - Karma: 372
not certain, but I think that when you analyze footage, its has to analyze the full clip, not just from the in point to the out point, so try making an independent clip that just has the part you want smoothcamed.
Apr 4 2012 8:07PM
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Diamonds
Posts: 4443 - Karma: 1,298
I figured out what I was doing wrong to create the ghosting effect:

So, it was shot in 1920x1080 at 30.
I attempted to export in 720 at 30 for Vimeo. I guess the smoothcam plugin analyzed the clip in 1920 and gets messed up when trying to export the project in 720. To solve:

Edit in 1920, export in 1920. Then go to mpeg streamclip and compress to 720 and de interlace if necessary!

hope this helps
Apr 7 2012 7:02PM
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