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Compressor / HV20 / ProRes Question
This is basically just me brainstorming and bouncing it off the Cow to see if what I’m thinking of is feasible. I’ve been using Canon’s HV20 recently and doing the Apple-recommended Compressor/ProRes workflow to remove pulldown from my 24p footage. That part of it works great. However, I’m also shooting on a 35mm adapter that does not use a flip component. No problem – monitor on something besides the flip-out LCD when you shoot, flop it in post, etc.
However, I was recently thinking, why not bake the flip filter into the process when I transcode to ProRes for pulldown removal? I can do things like burn in timecode and make small color correction adjustments (which I personally never use), so wouldn’t it be great if I could flop my image right then and there? As it is, I still have to flop all my footage once it’s in FCP which means that’s already something happening in my filter chain where I’d need to render if I wanted to export anything. It takes time and it takes up drive space. It would just be one less thing to worry about if I could do my pulldown removal and my flipping all in one convenient Compressor droplet.
I’ve looked through Compressor’s built-in filters as well as the geometry and frame control tabs and unfortunately it doesn’t seem like it’s an option, but maybe there’s some way of doing it that I’m not recognizing. I know a lot of people doing the HV20/adapter thing end up inverting the camera itself so that a proper image gets recorded to tape, but I’m not at that stage yet with my rig.
Anyway, just thought I’d put this out there to anyone who knows Compressor well or can think of some other way of accomplishing this. Thanks.
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18 Replies
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He’s asking if it’s possible to flip the image DURING the unique Compressor HV20 compressor workflow process instead of having to do it in Final Cut (which it seems like that thread answers).
It makes sense to me that he’d want to flip the image right there and then since he’s transcoding to ProRes at that point anyway. I’m going to look into this and see if there’s any way I can figure out to do this…
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Paul Escandon
Producer | Director | Editor
Apple Certified Trainer – Final Cut Pro
Oremus Productions
http://www.oremusproductions.com
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Adjunct Professor of Media
John Paul the Great Catholic University -
Just an idea: maybe Compressor will allow a negative scaling of 100%?
Regards,
Uli
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Uli,
Thanks for the suggestion. It doesn’t seem to be an option, however.
I’ve discovered what I think is at least a temporary workaround – if you flop the videos in Quicktime Pro, then Compressor honors their orientation when you process the file. It would still be simpler if it was a checkbox somewhere in Compressor itself, but this seems like a decent compromise.
My problem now (unrelated to Compressor) is figuring out how to script Quicktime Pro to flop a whole directory of videos. I keep reading that Automator can interface with Quicktime Pro, but I’m not coming up with much of substance. The default actions in Automator for Quicktime are pretty basic. I guess I could try some kind of AppleScript. Getting closer to a solution, though.
Thanks again, everyone who replied so far. If anyone knows about Automator/AppleScript and Quicktime, any advice would be appreciated.
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There used to be an application called “QT Batch”, maybe you can still find it.
Apart from that, have a look at this:
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools/rotateClips/index.html
Hope this helps,
Uli
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Yes, Paul. I understand. As it is right now, there’s no way to do this with the tools at hand that is very easy. (A click of a button, so to speak). It’d be nice as it’s coming up more and more, but it’s not like FCP has a redrock button (like I said in the other post). Your choices are to flip before conversion, or flip while editing which adds to the render and filter stack as Casey has mentioned. The script that Uli has linked to is a nice and automagic way to get things done, but it still just adds a filter to your clips.
For P2 material, raylight is working on away to get this done in it’s tools set.
Jeremy
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Hey Casey,
I stayed up late all last night figuring out how this could be accomplished – and I was able to figure out a way that isn’t 100% perfect but I’ll leave it up to the community to finish what I started.
First of all, I was able to modify some apple scripts that I found online that will rotate (or “flip”) a quicktime movie 180 degrees and save it in a different directory all through applescript. I uploaded them to my server and you can download them here:
https://www.oremusproductions.com/scripts/
There are 2 files there. RotateQT180Degrees.app is the application that you simply drag a quicktime movie file on or a selection of movies. It will then simply ask you for your output directory and do it’s job. The other file is the script file so people can look at it and tweak it.
The problem with this solution is that it essentially created a reference file to the original media – just flipped (even though the opening screen says it will create a self contained movie – that is wrong). This is good and bad. Good because it completes the task very fast and doesn’t add very much disk space. Bad because when you drag this file into Final Cut – the image is not flipped. If you open the new reference movie in quicktime player, however, the image is flipped.
If anyone knows apple script out there and wants to take a look at this script to modify it to save a self contained movie and not a reference movie, please do. I don’t really understand apple script that well to know how to do that. Or, if you can give the user an option or saving a reference movie or self contained movie – that would be even better.
So this solution as it stands right now doesn’t work in Final Cut, but it does flip the quicktimes in quicktime player and creates reference movies. I’ve started this.. and hopefully someone can finish this.
Oh and that link to the other piece of software that does the flipping through XML is very useful. I e-mailed to see how to buy the program because the guy only has a demo version on his page.
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Paul Escandon
Producer | Director | Editor
Apple Certified Trainer – Final Cut Pro
Oremus Productions
http://www.oremusproductions.com
– –
Adjunct Professor of Media
John Paul the Great Catholic University -
Paul, thanks for posting this and trying to come up with a solution.
My understanding of the XML workflow is not that it creates new media, but rather adds a filter via XML. It does not create new media. A very helpful tool, but it still does not take away the render pain.
Jeremy
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Yes, you are correct about the XML workflow. It does simply either apply a double flop to the file in the browser or gives you the option to rotate 180 degrees. It’s definitely a really good solution, but one that doesn’t address the Quicktime files themselves (which is probably good enough for almost anyone working in Final Cut Pro).
I still would like it if someone can perfect the batch rotating option to the Quicktime files themselves… just so another option exists out there. Maybe I’ll try to learn applescript better.
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Paul Escandon
Producer | Director | Editor
Apple Certified Trainer – Final Cut Pro
Oremus Productions
http://www.oremusproductions.com
– –
Adjunct Professor of Media
John Paul the Great Catholic University -
Paul,
Thanks so much for all your help! The flipped reference file thing with your script is perfect for the HV20 workflow since you’re effectively creating a new video in Compressor anyway, so that bakes it into the media itself and then we don’t have to worry about FCP not recognizing it.
As an aside, I tried doing the 180-degree rotation in Quicktime for some regular DV footage before, and as has been mentioned, it doesn’t show up in FCP, but then if you add effects and render, it actually does (in the rendered portion of the footage). Of course this wouldn’t be a good way for anyone to work since you’d still have to do your edits with upside-down and backwards footage prior to rendering.
The only problem with the reference file/Compressor/ProRes thing now is it seems adding the rotation makes the transcode take a lot longer. I’m not sure if that isn’t being caused by something else on my system at the moment, though. It’s still probably a time-saver in the long run when it comes to having to render in FCP and it’s definitely a space-saver.
Thanks again for everyone who helped out in this thread, what an awesome community.
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