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Bizarre Footage Crop
Man. Dudes (and dudettes). Any help would be just awesome. I am in a real pickle.
I am editing in Final Cut 7.02 on a DVCPRO HD timeline. I’m using clips from an old documentary that I was only able to find in digital form as an .mp4 that I converted to DVCPRO Hd(standard HVX format). The conversion seemed to have gone fine, as it plays back in quicktime, as well as in the viewer in Final Cut. However, whenever I put it into the timeline, it is inexplicably cropped and resized so that only about the top left quadrant is visible.
The crop, distort settings are all as the should be to see the whole image (ie – 0 cropping, simple resize to 150% to fill frame).
I should mention the source footage was 640×480, and although I encoded it into the 720p 60 DVCPRO codec to match my timeline, I left the source resolution the same. 640×480. Final Cut does not seem to have a problem with this in the viewer, but the Canvas definitely aint having it. Image below to illustrate.
I’ve been editing for 7 years, but ain’t never found an issue like this. I’d like to think one day I will not encounter any more bizarre problems in Final Cut. Until that day, I look to you guys.
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6 Replies
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[Gates Bradley] “I should mention the source footage was 640×480, and although I encoded it into the 720p 60 DVCPRO codec to match my timeline, I left the source resolution the same. 640×480”
A codec does not determine frame size, the frame size does.
If you left the frame size @ 640×480, why would you expect the frame size to be something different?
If I were you, I’d use compressor to make 720p60 DVCPro HD movies, upscaling the picture but use the 4×3 padding feature in the geometry tab. Frame size should be 960×720 with a DVCPro HD pixel aspect ratio.
The easiest way to do this is to use the DVCPro HD 720p60 preset that comes with Compressor and then apply the 4×3 padding. It should look something like this:
Jeremy
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[Jeremy Garchow] “If you left the frame size @ 640×480, why would you expect the frame size to be something different? “
I don’t think you quite understand my issue. I didn’t expect the re-encoding to redo the frame size. I did expect it to stay the same. (Resizing to a particular frame size is something Final Cut should and does do all the time). The issue is a cropping.
When I place a portion of my re-encoded footage into my timeline, and only then, do I get a crop. NOT a resizing, but a cropping, where only the 1st quadrant of the image is visible (ref: the above posted image). The issue seems to be some weird loss of translation from the viewer to the timeline. And in any case, nothing is distorted, it is heavily cropped, that is, made smaller by the HD timeline, not larger.
I will try what you suggested, but that still would not explain, really, the problem I am having. Unless I am missing something? (Which could always be the case)
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It looks fine. Completely normal. Uncropped and just as it should be.
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My apologies, Jeremy. Your solution seemed to work. If you don’t mind, can you tell me why? As I mentioned in the above post, I didn’t think the video’s native resolution was supposed to have any effect on how it is viewed in a timeline. I’ve worked with Final Cut for years and never encountered this problem, although I’ve mixed resolutions in a timeline countless times (typically Final Cut resizes it to whatever the timeline setting resolution is).
As far as I can tell this is just a glitch in Final Cut that I have found a workaround for, but like I said I might be missing something. I’m always trying to figure out the why’s, not just solutions, so if you got some light to shed, please enlighten me.
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[Gates Bradley] “I don’t think you quite understand my issue. “
I’m pretty sure I do. you are feeding information to FCP that it is trying to deal with and the footage being feed is ‘incorrect’.
If you follow the method I outlined earlier, FCP will know what to do with it as you are feeding it the correct information. A 640×480 DVCPro HD movie is confusing. If you fed it a 720×480 dv movie, it would know better what to do with it, but if you use compressor to up-convert to a setting that matches your timeline, you will have the best results of all. If you don’t trust me, that’s cool, but I can pretty much guarantee better results. Instead of wondering why FC isn’t working when you are feeding it bogus information and trying to fix an already broken problem, I would suggest feeding it the proper information and see if it works better. If it doesn’t, you really have a problem, but if you setup Compressor properly, you won’t have a problem.
Jeremy
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[Gates Bradley] “My apologies, Jeremy. Your solution seemed to work. If you don’t mind, can you tell me why?”
Because we are up-converting your footage to the same format and frame rate as your timeline. It truly is the best recipe for success. My guess on your first encode being odd was that you unintentionally screwed up a Compressor setting somewhere. It’s an easy thing to do if a person isn’t careful.
Jeremy
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