Desperately need help in Final Cut Express

[VIVIsectVI]

So, I thought I was finished with a project in Final Cut Express until I noticed something about two weeks ago - when I compared images between the Viewer and the Canvas, the one in the Canvas was definitely more pixelated. After searching for an answer to the problem and not finding anything helpful, I decided to post a thread on the official apple support forum for FCE.

I soon discovered that what's in the Canvas only turns pixelated after it's rendered. There were suggestions that I convert the video in MPEG Streamclip as opposed to letting FCE do it (it was shot at 24p on a Canon T2i). I tried that and it didn't work. Then there were some suggestions about checking rendering settings, which I did, and that was no help either. There were some other suggestions thrown out that I tried, too, but had no luck with them.

Having seemingly run out of any helpful ideas from those on that board, I decided to come here and see if any of you could enlighten me, so I can finally move on from this project, switch to FCPX, and never worry about FCE again.

Here's a link to the original thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4038894?start=15&tstart=0

There's a Viewer/Canvas picture comparison I posted, further down on the first page.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

 

[Alex H.]

I see several problems here (and in reading the other thread).

1) You're shooting at 1080p24. FCE cannot handle 24p material. Only 30p and 60i.

2) You're trying to convert your 24p material to 60i for editing. Or rather, you're letting FCE do that work. FCE is not designed to do that. Without using software that can telecine (add the pulldown), you're going to get wonky results.

3) Going from 24p to 60i and then deinterlacing is just going to cause more artifacts with the video. A proper telecine with pulldown will conform 24p to 60i, but should be left at that. But 60i may not be the right flavor anyway, depending on your output destination (video for Internet should be progressive, not interlaced).

4) Never trust what you see within your FCP/FCE desktop to be accurate to the final product. You aren't seeing the full-rez video, and you aren't seeing an accurate color space. If you author a DVD, or export to tape, or export a full-rez QuickTime, and it still has the same artifacts, then we have something to go on.