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AVI workflow
As a video editing exercise, I got the bright idea to record a song and a music video.
I dumped my finished aif audio file and a bunch of 640×480 AVI files (recorded on a little Canon point and shoot) into a 1920×1080 Pro Res 422 LT sequence and slogged through editing the entire 3 minute sequence and rendering every step of the way, until ultimately I had something I was somewhat okay with putting on YouTube. Sure, the audio and video didn’t always match up exactly perfectly since the audio was recorded first and the video was recorded on another device with the musicians lip syncing to the audio track, but it was close. Unfortunately the upload to YouTube messed up the sync even further.
I know now that I did a bunch of things wrong. Here’s what I think I should’ve done:
1. Converted the AVIs to Pro Res 422 in Compressor first.
2. Matched the sequence settings to my newly converted files.
3. Exported a Quicktime file with current settings
4. Used Compressor to output a YouTube-ready fileSo here are my questions:
1. Is the above correct?
2. Is there any way I could’ve properly and correctly synced the audio and video?
3. If I were to start over, could I convert my AVIs to Pro Res 422, start a new sequence with the correct settings (Pro Res 422 640×480), copy the clips from my edited timeline into this new sequence but have the clips point to the newly converted Pro Res files?Or would it be necessary to literally start from scratch with converted files?
I hope this makes sense to someone! Thanks in advance all.
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6 Replies
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Switch to premiere pro
Edit natively
Match sequence settings to footage size. 1080
Resize during compression
Download free 30 demo from adobes site and try. We do our dsr jobs 100% adobe.
Richard M. Harrington, PMP
Author: From Still to Motion, Video Made on a Mac, Photoshop for Video, Understanding Adobe Photoshop, Final Cut Studio On the Spot and Motion Graphics with Adobe Creative Suite 5 Studio Techniques
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Hi Louise,
AVI files can be easily rewraped to QT (MPGStreamclip > Save as..), they may or not work well in FC, depending of the codec (if they where DV, great)
If not, transcoding is the way.
Anyway, blowing that to 1080 will probably degrade a lot the picture.
Do you really need to finish at that size?
Unless 1080 necessary, I would try finish in 1280x 720.
rafael -
Richard, thanks for the suggestion. I was using this as an exercise to specifically learn my way around these kind of issues with FCP since that’s what I have daily access to at work, but I do also have occasional access to Premiere and learning it would be a good idea too – thanks!
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Rafael, thank you for your response! I hadn’t had the opportunity to use MPGStreamclip yet, I’ll give that a shot and see how it goes.
And yes, using 1080 was a mistake on my part – the original files out of the Canon were 640×480 and the final product was only destined for YouTube, so I would assume there would be no reason to finish at anything larger than 640×480!
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[Louise Macaulay] “And yes, using 1080 was a mistake on my part – the original files out of the Canon were 640×480 and the final product was only destined for YouTube, so I would assume there would be no reason to finish at anything larger than 640×480!”
Absolutely. More resolution is OK if you gonna use it (zoom, pan), but even like that end up being a problem. You have to process a huge amount of information just to be trashed when downscaling.
In the other hand your picture quality will suffer too when downscaling. FCP makes a poor job; Compressor does it better as long as you set the Control frame on an better resizing.
If you know the size of your web video, try to work that size in Compressor and them edit the stuff in FC.
Upscaling your 640×480 to 1080 and back to downscaling will kill the picture.
rafael -
This is an interesting discussion for some things I am working on.
If I had captured similar AVI files (480×720) and the ultimate destination was DVD and potential TV broadcast rather than Youtube, would it be a good idea to do a conversion to something like ProRes422 and would it be wise to edit at the highest resolution that might potentially used for broadcast?
Even if the image gets zoomed in to semi-mushiness at 1080×1920 or whatever, at least the title would be crisp?
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