• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  FC Studio 5.1 – green screen in uncompressed 8bit

  Posted by Alex on November 15, 2006 at 8:11 am

  hello,

  i have recently upgraded to FCStudio 5.1, QT 7.1.3 and Decklink 5.7.2
  as usual with upgrading, i have experienced a few bugs. i have however run into a problem that feel a little more serious.

  i am editing animated scenes with animation codec.
  in FCP4, i always set compressor to BM 8 bit.
  (i dont leave it as animation codec as i cant get playback through the broadcast monitor)

  now that i have upgraded, i am now setting my compressor as the recommended Uncompressed 8 bit 4:2:2.

  the strangest thing is happening.

  when i reopened this animated project, the compressor for my 2 master timelines had defaulted to BM DVOO and BM(2Vuy) respectively.

  When i changed the codec back to Uncompressed 8 bit on the 1st timeline, it was fine. When i did the same with the 2nd timeline, the picture disapeared and i was left with a green screen. but only on some of the scenes.

  Rendering times have become much slower as well.

  about a week ago i ran FCP rescue 5, because the application would not start up at all.

  am i heading for a major system breakdown? it feels that way. i have a really important job (animation again) that needs to be completed on this system over Christmas and it is really important that FCP is working properly.

  any suggestions?

  thanks in anticipation.

  alex

  MAC OSX 10.4.8
  Dual 2.5 GHz PowerPC G5
  4.5 GB SDRAM

  scratch disc is a Sanman with over 200 GB memory.

  Bill Lee replied 19 years, 6 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Bill Lee

  November 15, 2006 at 11:45 pm

  https://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/detail.asp?techID=78

  This probably is the best description of the various codecs that you are likely to have on your computer. Although you’d think your “8-bit Uncompressed” video is a immutable standard, in reality it contains data formatted in particular ways that may or not be compatible with capture or playback hardware and software.

  The key reason everything just doesn’t ‘work’ is probably related to your statement “now that i have upgraded [from FCP4 to 5]”. From the above Decklink support article: “starting with Final Cut Pro HD 5.0 and the DeckLink 5.0 drivers, all DeckLink cards use the Apple uncompressed 8-bit and 10-bit codecs for all standard definition and high definition uncompressed 4:2:2 video. The Blackmagic codecs are no longer installed for uncompressed 8-bit and 10-bit 4:2:2 video”

  Your projects were created and captured with the older Decklink codecs and that is what the FCP was telling you when it ‘changed’ the codec type (actually it didn’t change the type – it was already that type and was just labelling the codec as the older Blackmagic type). When you changed the codec for your timeline, it forced the system to translate from the Blackmagic to the Apple 8-bit Uncompressed codecs, and this may explain the green screen issue.

  The problem of FCP not starting up is unlikely to be related to this codec issue on the face of it. FCP Preference corruption doesn’t need any special circumstances to make it happen.

  Bill Lee

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