FCPX a question handling 4K footages

[AppleHater]

I recently got FCPX and want to venture into the 4K videos. I have a novice question related to it. With 4K footages, I plan to down sample it to 1080p in most cases. Instead, I will use the 4K footages for cropping, a little panning, and stabilization.

For that purpose, should I make a 1080p project or a 4K project and export it to 1080p? Would 4K footages blend well with 1080p footages?

 

[BeechFlyer]

Use 1080P for the project settings in FCP X, i.e. the format of what you want to export in the end. Then you can import 4K clips and scale&translate as needed.

 

[jwpoof]

As BeechFlyer says, create 1080P projects. I also then change the spatial conform to "none" and the Scale to 50% for each 4k clip. This step might not be necessary, but I feel better zooming into 4k clips that fill the screen at 50% Scale.

 

[joema2]

By default FCPX will create the project based on the 1st clip added. I have edited many 4k projects using pan/zoom in post, where final export is 1080p. This works equally well whether using 4k material in a 1080p project or a 4k project.

There is no problem intermixing 1080p and 4k material. However it is always best to do a brief test export to verify it looks OK before committing a lot of work.

 

[BeechFlyer]

There is nothing "wrong" with working in a 4K project and then exporting to 1080P. But why pay the penalty of a 4K project in terms of performance and storage needs (for temp files) if you know your final export will be 1080P?

That's why I suggested to create a 1080P project.

 

[joema2]

There is nothing "wrong" with working in a 4K project and then exporting to 1080P. But why pay the penalty of a 4K project in terms of performance and storage needs (for temp files) if you know your final export will be 1080P?...

This is good advice. If your final output is 1080p or 720p, it automatically scales the 4k content to the 1080p frame size, yet the underlying 4k resolution is still available. You can still zoom into a frame and FCPX is smart enough to use the 4k content. Editing performance will be better and render files smaller since it only uses 1080p for that.

You create a 1080p project for use with 4k one of two ways:

(1) Create a project (File>New>Project) with the default settings of "use automatic settings" which sets the project resolution based on the 1st clip added to the timeline. Simply add a scrap 1080p clip, that locks the project in 1080p, then add all your 4k material, then delete the scrap 1080p clip. -- OR:

(2) Create a project (File>New>Project), pick "use custom settings", pick the custom button and select 1080p and 29.97. That manually creates a 1080p project, then import your 4k material.

If you did a 1080p edit this way with 4k material, then later wanted to export 4k, you just copy/paste the timeline into a 4k project and it becomes 4k. All the edits are retained.

To my knowledge this only works with FCPX, not Premiere. With Premiere if you pick "Default scale to frame size" on a 1080p sequence, 4k resolution is lost.

 

[dollystereo]

why not use proxy?