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Bad Formats, Bad, Bad
I’m trying to clean up a project I inherited. It had all sorts of compression types in it I’m converting (H.264, Animation, etc), but the originally shot footage was all captured at DV/DVCPRO – NTSC. I’ve been searching the web and this forum for a reasonably comprehensive list of video formats, audio formats, and especially still formats to avoid. Anyone have any leads for me? This seems like such a useful list.
And, in regard to audio formats, is there any way to determine within the application — preferably within a bin or project window — what the audio format of an audio-only file is? The Compressor column offers nothing on an audio-only file and Audio, Aud Format and Aud Rate don’t tell me whether I’m looking at an aiff or a wav or something else. I can hope the extension is still on the name, but it isn’t always.
Martin
2 x 2.26 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
12 GB RAM
OS 10.5.8
ATI Radeon HD 4870
FCP 7.0.2
Quicktime 7.6.6
Avid Media Composer 4.0.2.20 -
4 Replies
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Any codec list among the Easy Setups will work well with GCP. That said, one of the ProRes choices – probably LT for DV – would work best. As for discovering parameters of a file try MediaIbfo. It’s a free download. BTW, in my experience FCP doesn’t care if the audio is aif or wav. It wants it to be 48k Linear PCM.
John
MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.8 QT7.6.4 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.2, Motion 4.0.2, Comp 3.5.2, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.2)Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO & 192 Digital I/O, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN
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OK, John, but I’m trying to figure out what I need to get rid of now that it’s already in my project. Are tiffs OK? PDF’s? JPEGs? GIFFs? How about DVCPRO HD 720p60 mixed in with DV/DVCPRO – NTSC? Animation?
I’ve got a lot of different files in here and I’m converting like crazy. Final Cut will let almost anything in; it just won’t necessarily treat it well.
Martin
2 x 2.26 Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
12 GB RAM
OS 10.5.8
ATI Radeon HD 4870
FCP 7.0.2
Quicktime 7.6.6
Avid Media Composer 4.0.2.20 -
To make life easier I’d convert it all to ProRes or ProResLT as you have mostly SD footage it seems. Make sure the frame rate is the same. Different timebases will really mess up FCP. I usually use png graphics these days, but jpgs will work fine. I’ve never tried tiffs, but they’ll probably work, too. Keep the pix at a reasonable size. You don’t want their dimensions exceeding 2000 pixels per side. Big pix can slow FCP down. If you’re not moving on the pix make them the frame size you’re using.
John
MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.8 QT7.6.4 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.2, Motion 4.0.2, Comp 3.5.2, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.2)Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO & 192 Digital I/O, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN
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Ditto. Thank you for this post and thank you John for your answer.
Rick Adams
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