Anyone using a 4K monitor with FCP X?

Question

Is anyone using FCP X on a 4K monitor? I'm thinking about getting a Dell 4K monitor as my main monitor but I'm a little worried the user interface support on 4K is weak. I think everything is going to look super tiny.
Has anyone already experienced this?
Thanks!

Answer 1

So I have my new Mac Pro set up. 8-Core, 32 gigs RAM, Dual 700 GPUs, 512 gig internal Flash drive.
I purchased the 27" Thunderbolt display as my main Final Cut Pro X screen and I have the Dell UP2414q 4K monitor plugged in as the Viewer display.
I have the Dell set to "Best for Display" and it works fine. I have some 4480 x 1920 RED footage and I have the FCP X Viewers on the Dell. The footage is set to 100% and it bleeds a little off the sides, as it should since the monitor is 3820 wide. It's at its native resolution.
The user interface elements of the second monitor are at normal size - the menu bar, the FCP X view options. Buying a 4K monitor and using Best for Display gives you the desktop the size of a typical 1080 monitor, but it all looks like a Retina display. It's very crisp.
So if you want a second monitor to hold a ton of Adobe palettes, and have a very large desktop, I'd recommend getting a Thunderbolt display, beause this display behaves like a 1080 monitor in that regard. If you want a 4K monitor specifically for color grading 4K footage at the native size so you can see all the artifacts and things you wouldn't see with the footage at 50%, this Dell monitor is fine and it's $890 on Amazon. It's not a professional color grader's monitor, obviously, but it does well for me.
I took some 4480 x 1920 RED footage that had a sky that was gray (the famous Mercedes in the mountains footage). I used the color picker color correction in FCP X and was able to select that sky very easily. I can see why the fat 4K footage is so great in regards to color grading. Because you don't have the massive color gradiation and artifacts you get in the more compressed media, when you use the color picker, it selects a very large, clean, section of the sky. I was able to quickly make the sky more saturated and blue and play it in real time (Better Performance) it's it's perfectly clean with no halos around the tree branches as they move into the foreground of the sky. Very nice!
Nice feature in FCP X is all the effects, transitions, etc., have a "4K-ready content only" button at the top so it only presents you with effects and transitions that work with 4K footage.
It took a lot of time calibrating this Dell monitor. It has the Adobe RGC color space built in but when I set it to that and set the OS X Display color option to Adobe RGB, it all had a very slight purple/pink huge. Very slight. Whites were not pure white like they are on the Thunderbolt and my blue sky had a tinge of pink to it.
I calibrated it with advanced options in the OS X Display preferences. I then connected my Samsung HD LED TV into the HDMI port of the Mac Pro and set it as my A/V display in FCP X. I was able to do the custom color setting on the Dell monitor itself and lower the saturation and RGB values. It took about 15 minutes to get it looking right. Now, I don't see the very slight purple/pink tink. My blue sky looks blue, etc., and it looks exactly how it will look on DVD and Blu-ray and projectors at film festivals.
The Samsung LED TV was a breeze to use. As soon as I plugged it into the HDMI port of the Mac Pro, the displays changed and OS X went to 1920 x 1080 60hz. The color was set to an HD color preset (I forget the number and I disconnected it). Arranging the multiple monitors is as you'd expect, just works.
BTW, I have 2 10 TB 5Big Lacie Thunderbolt 2 hard drives. They are about $1K each at 10 TBs. I have one for my footage and one as a backup with Time Machine. No formatting necessary - just plug them in and go. I plugged in the first one, told OS X no for Time Machine. Plugged in the second one, told Time Machine yes. Renamed the second drive "Backup". I turned off hard drive sleep becuase it's annoying. You hear it spin up, spin down, spin up, etc. as you work.
I used the AJA benchmark and this is what I got with 16 gig test file, 4K video simulation:
Write 740.3 MB/s
Read: 849.1 MB/s
Fast!
FCP X loads in 4 seconds on this system off the internal Flash drive.
Cheers!