UPDATED – Oct. 3
I was recently at a Final Cut Pro user group meeting where the screen you see here was discussed. (You can find this for yourself by opening Final Cut Pro and going to Sequence > Settings > Video Processing tab.)
Since one of the other Final Cut experts and I had a difference of opinion on what this did, I thought I’d contact Apple to get the true scoop.
Anyway, one of the folks on the Final Cut team was kind enough to write back. However, what they sent me was wrong — they provided the right answer to the wrong question. So, to correct this, here’s the correct use of this setting.
This controls the quality of rendering of effects in the Motion tab inside Final Cut. According to the Final Cut manual, when set to Fastest, this option performs fast, low-quality motion transformations on your clips. This option improves rendering time, so it is useful when you are sketching out motion effects. When set to Normal this option uses standard scaling and transformation algorithms and yields medium-quality results compared to the other options. When set to Best, this option performs very high-quality motion transformations on your clips. Use this option for final rendering before output or export.
However, if you change the rotation setting in the Motion tab, all rendering is done at fastest quality, regardless of how this popup menu is set.
I’m sorry that the original information I received was incorrect.
