-
New User – Atypical Question
I introduced myself as a new user a few weeks ago, asking for advice for a skilled Avid editor learning FCP. The next day I got booked on a job that had to be done on Avid because I’m not up to speed on FCP.
Now something very nasty has come up. But the good news is: its a real project that I can use to explore FCP. The bad news: my source material is mpeg and ac3 files from DVDSP. Here’s the situation.
I’m overseas. I need to cut a montage from my reel–with elaborate audio and sound design. I don’t have access to my digibeta masters to digitize into FCP, and there’s no NTSC decks around here anyway. My only available sources are my “kit” that I use for putting together custom reels in DVDSP. This kit consists of 40 or 50 spots and promos. The files were created on some type of hardware encoding system (Sonic I think) and they’re really nice encodes. I several hundred bucks making them over the past two years. They work great in DVDSP. I just string together the spots I want, add the title card, and burn the DVD. But this DVD needs to be much more elaborate than that.
#1 In AVID, it won’t allow me to import those mpeg files–no surprise to you guys. But I just dragged a couple of them into the FCP timeline, rendered, and they play! Nice! But the ac3 audio is not supported. How do I get those ac3 audio files into some usuable file format for FCP? Is it even possible? Again, my apologies if this thread is misplaced.
#2 My other question is this: Since image quality is actually an issue: if there is a way to convert the ac3s and I end up actually being able to cut this montage of my work in FCP, when it comes time to export back to the DVD, will I be recompressing, and then lose a lot of the nice quality I get on DVDSP? Or can it be transparant in and back out of FCP?
#3 A few weeks, I wanted to add three spots to my reel that were not encoded in my “kit”. They were uncompressed files out of FCP, given to me by the guy who edited the spots. (They were spots I directed that someone else edited in FCP). I also had an uncompressed QT movie of the same spots. Miraculously, when I brought the FCP uncompressed files into DVDSP–it worked! Why is this miraculous to me? Because my existing mpegs are all NTSC and the uncompressed FCP files are PAL. Am I crazy? I burned a DVD and it worked. The PAL files seemed to have been converted into assets in the NTSC DVDSP project. When I used the FCP file format, it seemed to play fine. (I used a different program to convert the audio to ac3 from FCP file). The QT however, stuttered–ng. So the question is: since it worked in DVDSP, any chance I’ll be able to add some of my PAL stuff into the NTSC FCP timeline? Sorry if this seems like a ridiculous question. This is really not a good situation. Sadly, this has become really important. I thought of having the whole lot of my spots and promos converted on a top drawer convertor from digibeta NTSC to digibeta PAL before I started coming over here last year–but I didn’t do it for various reason–mostly complication and cost. However like I said, this is a “real” job and I’d rather cut my teeth in FCP on something creative rather than plodding through the manuals and tutorials. And the deadline is fairly loose.
Any hope for me? Thanks!
-
12 Replies
-
Try MPEG streamclip.
-
There is an new version of MPEG Streamclip available.
added compatibility with DivX 6.5-6.6
improved AVI and DivX playback, encoding and editing
added an internal AVI importer
improved iPod compatibility
added the Open URL command with the Download button
added an internal audio resampler
added support for MPEG-1 in VOBs and transport streams
the Fix Timecode Breaks command has been improved
added 90 and 180 degree rotation
many bugs have been fixedSteve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Director-At-Large
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group -
Unbelievably good! But it doesn’t recognize the ac3 audio files, They won’t open in there. How can I convert those ac3s?
My Powerbook, with older versions of DVDSP and FCP installed, has a program called A.pack. It converted the ac.3 into two SD files: L & R
But I can’t find that program on recent install of Studio on my G5 Quad. (that bother’s me).Mpeg streamclip seems to support a standards conversion. have you used it for that? how is it?
Do you reccomend converting my existing NTSC mpegs to any certain kind of file in FCP, or just leave them as is? (clips being standards converted from PAL notwithstanding).
Thanks, that’s a gem.
-
A.Pack is now built-in to Compressor.
Ed -
Excellent! Its almost all set up. I tested a few different workflows. Compressor still doesn’t seem to want to see the ac3s I’ve got on import, but decAC3 works fine. I learned a bunch today! Thank you.
-
. . . . but does anyone have any opinions about the transparency issue I mentioned> If I use the mpeg files as-is in FCP, can I escape any degradation of the image quality?
-
You are not saving yourself any quality by bringing the MPG files into FCP and rendering. Just making the edit needlessly inconvenient.
When you render in the timeline, you are essentially converting it to whatever codec the timeline is. What is your timeline codec, anyway?I would use MPEG Streamclip to convert them to Apple Uncompressed 8 bit. Make your FCP timeline an 8 bit Uncompressed one, and edit away, without rendering.
-
I’m a new user to FCP–I come from an Avid background. So I don’t even know how to change the parameters you are talking about . . . yet.
That said: what you’ve told me is really helpful. What little I know about FCP, I do know that the timeline is based on a certain resolution, format, and standard that I have to set. I’ll dig into it, and any Quick Startup Tips from you or anyone else is greatly appreciated–I know its not that hard. I did not know until now that when I render, I am interpolating data based on timeline parameters. Super helpful for me to understand this!
Could you please help with two questions so I understand this better.
why 8 bit? if the original source was from digibeta which is 10 bit, why choose 8 bit.
I always think its a good idea to avoid re-compressing compressed files. So maybe I’m not actually re-compresing to get to the 8-bit uncompressed, but I will have to compress again when encoding for the new DVD. The goal is simply to eliminate as much (or any) degradation, if possible. I thought that if I could set the timeline (codec) for the same parameters as the existing mpeg DVD assets, and burn the DVD from that timeline, that I would effectively avoid re-crunching the data and not lose any image quality. Is that right?
-
To access or change your sequence settings select the timeline and hit Command-zero. You can set things manually, for special circumstances, or use one of the sequence presets.
The reason he said 8-Bit uncompressed is simply for file size and disk speed requirements. This may exist on digibeta, but your source footage for this project is from an MPEG. You aren’t losing quality by going with 8 bit over 10 bit since the quality was lost in the original encode to MPEG 2. You’re trying to preserve what quality you have left.
FCP doesn’t support using MPEG 2 as a sequence codec (I’m not counting HDV), so you’re going to have to convert it to something else either before you bring it in or on render.
I’ve done this with DV and it looked fine, but that’s DV so your mileage may vary. Be careful with you MPEG encode settings, since that’s the next chance to lose quality. since it’s a demo reel, you can probably be very generous with your bit-rate. Also, check out compression markers in the FCP manual… may help.Zak
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up