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Spanned P2 MXF into FCP7
Hello,
I’m not exactly sure where the problem lies in this issue, so I opted to post in the CatDV forum since that’s where I’m originating from during this all:
I have CatDV along with Calibrated for MXF viewing/importing into FCP. Everything is all fine and dandy up until I try to send “spanned MXF” files from CatDV in to FCP7 using the “drag to Other tab — Final Cut Projects” method.
Something goes wrong with the frame size of the clip, and I’m actually losing quite a bit of picture in the video.
Any P2 MXF files that aren’t spanned, work just fine. They go right in to Final Cut with no frame size problems.
Because of that — in CatDV if I elect to show “Metaclip contents” and bring each individual MXF file of that spanned video in to FCP — there is no problem. Frame size is absolutely normal.
Here are 4 pictures with what I experienced.
Here is the original spanned MXF file in CatDV. Everything looks good:
I then bring it in to FCP from CatDV. The framing is way off. Interviewee is cut off on all 4 sides.
I brought down the scaling to about 60%. This is the result:
In CatDV, I then showed the contents of that P2 Metaclip, and brought in the individual MXF file. Everything looks good to me:
Has anyone experienced this before? Both ways enter into FCP as DVCPRO HD 1280x1080p clips — however it’s just whenever I bring in a spanned file, that it gives me weird framing issues like above.
The only difference I noticed was the “distort” settings under the “motion” tab between them — I tried replicating the settings in the “spanned MXF” file but that did not help.
At least I know I can always bring in the individual MXF file from within the Metaclip to avoid any problems.
Thank you for giving this a read. If you have any suggestions, or even who I should email, I greatly appreciate it!
-Nick S.
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17 Replies
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Nick what is the frame size in CatDV metadata? Also be sure you are on 9.0.6
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Thanks for the reponse, Matt.
All our machines are on 9.0.6 currently.
The frame in CatDV reads it as 1920×1080 — and in the preview window the spanned MXF “metaclip” looks great. It just screws up as soon as I send it straight into FCP7. I get what was in the 2nd and 3rd picture above.
Here is a shot of the tech tab for this spanned MXF metaclip in question (it’s not just this one that does it, it’s any spanned MXF metaclip):
Thanks again for reading,
-Nick S.
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Double check the field for frame size and make sure it has 1920 in there. Also this maybe a bug as there have been a number of changes to spanned clips in last couple releases. Start a ticket here and let’s drag in the dev team. https://www.squareboxmedia.co.uk/helpdesk/
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Double-checked that field, definitely says “1920×1080”.
I will open up a ticket, I wasn’t aware of that ticket site you linked, so thanks again Matt!
-Nick S.
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Cool Nick, keep me in the loop. May take a bit but we will get to the bottom of this…. One other thing to try is make a sequence of the individual clips and bring that over.
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Have you found a way to resolve this problem? I’m having the same exact issue.
Here’s my screenshot from CatDV (9.0.6):
This is what it looks like in FCP7:
And when I scale it down to 75percent, you can see it looks strangely wide, letterboxing inside the 16:9 canvas. As if the pixel aspect ratio is not registering or something:
Any info or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Jack -
Hi Jack,
I put in a ticket to support about a month ago about this issue. Hopefully we will get a fix to this soon.
-Nick S.
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Thanks, Nick, please do let me know when you find out.
For what it’s worth, I noticed it’s not just spanned clips (which come into FCP as a sequence) but ANY sequence… at least with this P2 footage. In the screenshot below, I brought in a sequence made in CatDV then brought in a single clip and layered it on top, dropping opacity to 50% to align the guy in the frame. The ‘wide’ clip is from the sequence and the ‘tall’ clip is solo. SAME source file. Weird.
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Apologies for the delay responding while we investigated this issue.
It seems that the problem lies with the way the frame size is reported from MXF files, as 1920×1080, instead of the native DV size of 1280×1080 which is what FCP7 expects. If you send a single P2 clip from CatDV (as a merged clip) FCP seems to read the frame size information from the file and copes, whereas if you send a spanned clip it has to go over as a sequence and FCP seems to get confused by the difference between the frame size of the sequence and of the media.
We are still investigating how best to resolve this in CatDV but there seem to be two possible workarounds:
a) for an existing sequence in FCP which appears incorrectly zoomed in, bring up FCP Sequence Settings dialog and enter a custom frame size of 1920×1080.
b) when exporting the merged clip from CatDV, rather than dragging it over using the “magic door”, save it as a FCP7 XML file then edit that file with a text. On line 60 or thereabouts change 1920 so it says 1280 instead, then import the XML file into FCP.
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Rolf, I’m finding the same issue with DVCPRO HD 720p files as well. It’s really tricky to get the single files to mix in a sequence with the spanned (sequenced) ones, because they each react differently to resizing the canvas as you suggest…
Nick and I can’t be the only ones experiencing this issue – anyone else out there?? I’m in a jam here trying to cut 8 hours of multicam sequences like this and hoping for a cure. Deadline looming…
Thanks,
Jack
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