Creative Communities of the World Forums

The peer to peer support community for media production professionals.

Activity Forums Apple Final Cut Pro FCP Issues with importing videos, play fine in Quicktime/VLC

  • FCP Issues with importing videos, play fine in Quicktime/VLC

    Posted by Kevin Pamplona on July 23, 2015 at 2:35 am

    I have some mp4 videos imported from my iPhone. When I play them on VLC, Quicktime, or Finder Preview, they look absolutely fine.

    But when I bring them into Final Cut Pro, playback shows really messed up videos. Large pixels of green/red/off colors, audio keeps going, but images are stuck as pixelated blobs, etc.

    I used MPEG Streamclip and converted the video to MOV, but its still the same issue.

    About half the time I import it, FCP will also freeze and I’ll have to force quit.

    Has anyone seen this before?

    Bill Davis replied 11 years, 1 month ago 4 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Mark Smith

    July 23, 2015 at 11:15 am

    I didn’t completely understand your post before I posted an answer. I don’t understand your problem at all. I have seen weird digi artifacts that you document when transferring camera files via a card reader that was failing, but not directly from an iPhone to computer,,,,

  • Jeff Kirkland

    July 24, 2015 at 9:32 pm

    Haven’t seen anything like that before but you might want to try reinstalling final cut. I’d think there was a fairly drastic corruption somewhere.

    Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
    http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

  • Bill Davis

    July 26, 2015 at 4:51 pm

    Yeah, two things.

    First, Apple is somewhat constrained by the playback technology that it either has invented (Quicktime, etc) and what it has licensed (h-264 etc.) Programs like VLC and Handbrake have an entirely different set of licensing and IP rules they work within. So just because VLC plays a file, that has only very limited linkage to whether or not Apple can play it back in a tool like FCP X.

    And a best practice is that when you import ANYTHING into X. you open up the Render Manager and make SURE that the file is fully read in and transcoded (if necessary) before you stop the import.

    Even with that done perfectly, import corruption is a real thing that affects EVERY NLE. Sometimes you just have to drop back and freshly re-import to get a file to work. It’s just how digital video works.

    Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

We use anonymous cookies to give you the best experience we can.
Our Privacy policy | GDPR Policy