Help! My video looks like junk!

Corwin says:

I'm working in Final Cut Pro, but the video in the viewer looks very distorted... there's lines all through it, and it looks interlaced. I just switched computers from an eMac to the new iMac. I don't get it, I even have the canvas size at 100%, so it should be running at full quality. Will it look like this in the finished product? How do I fix this?

Short answer: your finished product will be just fine.

Long answer: Most video you tape nowadays is interlaced. The LCD display on your iMac is not interlaced. That's why your video looks like junk: it's flashing a bunch of lines on the screen, but that's not how your display works. AH!

Interlaced Video

So how do you fix this? To work around this problem, you could use a deinterlace filter on your whole video, but then it'd look like junk on interlaced displays (old tube TV's and computer monitors). Instead, you have to trick Final Cut Pro into deinterlacing your video only when it's in your canvas: just resize the window slightly and select "Fit to Window" in your canvas' view options. As long as you're not viewing the video at 100%, it'll look just great. Yeah, I know. Silly problem!

Problem Solved!

Oh, and if you use this trick, your finished product will still be interlaced when you export it. And in most situations, that's a good thing.