FCE filters versus plug-ins

[Robert Simon]

This is both a film-look and a Mac question:

I'm what you might call a serious hobbyist, and I just want my images to look the best they can (and I've learned A LOT from these forums: thanks!)

I've read about Magic Bullet and the Nattress filters for improving the film look and I recently downloaded the Nattress demos to try out the film looks/de-interlacing.

There is no question that the filter improves the look and does it quickly. But to my inexperienced eye it doesn't look noticably different than what I get by applying de-interlace filters and adjusting color and saturation within FCE. However, to this point I'm just comparing on my computer screen, not on a TV where I will watch the final project.

1) When you apply filters such as these, is the comparative result that you see on a computer screen way different than on a TV?

2) Does the simple de-interlace filter in FCE reduce resolution?
3) Is there anything I should be aware of if I use film-look filters along with slo-mo?

Thanks in advance!

[Glenn Chan]

1- A big resounding yes.

Final Cut displays the video very differently than a TV would.

Usually not full resolution.
One field only when paused.
You don't get the effect of seeing what a CRT does to the image (particularly important for interlace flicker and 60i to 30p or 24p conversions).
Underscan.

2- Yes.

3- Probably not. Shoot slow-mo in 60i. Graeme is supposedly writing a filter that does 60i-->24p slowmo conversion??? (FCP CANNOT do this.)

Diffusion filters may slightly screw up if you have Final Cut set to field or frame rendering. Not 100% sure on the right thing to do in Final Cut.
I believe if your clips match the sequence settings then you are ok. All your diffused clips would have to be the same 60i or 30p or 24p format, and the timeline has to match that.

[Graeme Nattress]

There's a big quality difference between the in-built FCP de-interlace tools and Film Effects, with Film Effects being a lot better, but you really need to see the results on a decent broadcast monitor or TV.

As Glenn says, the display in FCP is "preview" only. And does not represent what you'll see on TV very well.

There are also controls for gamma curves that you just can't do inside FCP without plugins, and same for the really nice bleach bypass effect etc. If I could have done all this stuff in FCP, I'd never have wrote the plugins!

For slowmo, use G Map Frames in Standards Converter which does a nice 60i to 24p in a 24p timeline. But then you'd have to edit everything in a 24p timeline and the workflow is very different to just applying Film Effects.

Graeme