Quick question about basic motion and pixels

Griffinity

Griffinity

Active member
When I shoot interviews, I shoot in 1080 and edit in a 720 timeline, so that I can occasionally frame up closer cutaways by increasing the scale of the footage in basic motion from 66.67% to 100%, and setting a new center point.

When I move the center point manually, I'm left with new coordinates like -107.26, 48.97. I usually round the numbers to the nearest integer, partly because of an OCD tendency, and partly because I assume this is better for Final Cut.

I'm under the impression that these coordinates are pixels, so how does FCP handle fractions of pixels? Is it redrawing/blending them? Or rounding automatically? Am I right to be adjusting these numbers, or am I wasting my time? Or is there a better way to handle this?

Thanks for the advice!
 
Even if it were blending them (I doubt it), you would have to be one hell of a pixel peeper to really see any significant loss in IQ.
 
It uses a Cartesian Geometry scheme, and yes those are pixel measurements from the center of the frame. Moving a fraction of a pixel is very easy, because none of the "image pixels" are effected. It's a simple mathematical equation to figure where the center of the image sits inside the canvas frame. The canvas frame doesn't need to match pixels exactly, as pixels can be repositioned pretty easily this way. It takes a mathematician to really understand it, and when an Apple engineer explained the math to me, I got a headache. But it works with no loss of image quality or manipulation of actual image pixels. Now I need a drink...
 
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