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black video on other computer
Scary thought: you make a QT movie, check it on your computer, where it plays fine, and then send it to the client, who hears the soundtrack but sees only black video.
A colleague in another city sent me a .mov which played fine on his computer, but when I tried to play it, there was audio but only black for video. The original files that he was working with were from a Canon 7d.
He reported that the originating sequence had a peculiar characteristic: a very limited range of choices for RT in the relevant sequence timeline.
Oddly, just last week, after importing files from a new mp4 camera, I noticed that when I hit the “RT” button in the resulting sequence, I got a much-abbreviated range of choices. Kevin Monahan replied that this was probably due to a codec which was not supported for Unlimited RT.
I’ve examined both my own and my colleague’s FCP project files, and I’m mystified. The codecs are Apple ProRes or ProRes (HQ) in both cases, as are the constituent video clips. When I look at Sequence/Settings, in one project (mine) the Video Processing choices are grayed out, but in my colleague’s, they are available.
If a codec is not supported for Unlimited RT, would that tend to make a resulting QT file have black video? (Although my sequence with a limited RT options plays fine). How can you determine that a given QT movie will have trouble playing on someone else’s computer, when it plays fine on your own?
Thanks.
Bob C
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5 Replies
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The black is most likely due to the lack of a codec on the playing machine. The reduced options in RT is probably due to the clip having a non-edit codec like H.264, which is most used with Flip and other inexpensive cams. If you always use one of the codecs from FCP’s Easy Setups, you’ll have full RT functionality and many less edit issues.
John
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If the computer you’re playing it on doesn’t have the same codec you used to create it, you’re not going to be able to view it. That’s why most people compress to H.264 for distribution.
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It’s not that peculiar and unfortunately not that uncommon either.
QuickTime (and therefore Final Cut Pro, which is based around QuickTime) is only capable of playing video if the corresponding codec is installed on the machine you’re trying to view it on.
With the standard install of QuickTime you get a handful of commonly used codecs – things like H.264 and DV along with a bunch of legacy codecs (such as Sorenson and Cinepak) to make sure that older video’s will always play back. These are in the Library>QuickTime folder of your hard drive and show up as .component files. These ‘components’ sometimes contain more than one codec so just because you don’t have a corresponding .component file to the type of video you are playing back don’t assume that you can’t play back the video (the AppleHDVcodec.component contains the codecs for playing XDCAM as well as HDV). To find out what codec your video is you should try to open it in QuickTime player and open the inspector (Apple+I). Unless the codec is very unusual it usually is displayed here. (Otherwise try opening it in VLC and pressing Apple+I).
When you install Final Cut Pro you get a few more codecs more suited for editing – (such as DVCProHD and XDCAM) and from Final Cut Pro 6 the Pro Res family was introduced (Pro Res LT, 444, proxy etc were introduced with Final Cut Pro 7).
Unfortunately it’s impossible to explain everything about why some codecs work and some don’t in this forum. There are probably over a hundred codecs in use at the moment – some are made by third parties where licensing laws come into play and must be bought or bundled with software, others run at such high bit-rate they just don’t play back on most people’s computers. Some older codecs can cause conflicts, some will work on a mac but not a PC (DVCProHD). Some allow you to view a video but not encode it, some allow you to view Flash video, some allow you to view .avi files, some allow you to view Avid files. There’s even a QuickTime codec that allows you to view and interact with 3D content.
Back to your original questions. I am guessing that your system is running Final Cut Pro 5 which is why the Pro Res files won’t play (If you are running FCP 6 or 7 the .component file has possibly been deleted or become corrupt). And the reason why the RT settings are reduced? Final Cut Pro is optimised to work with only a small amount of codecs at certain frame rates and frame sizes. You should aim to only work with video in these formats. These include…
Common editing codecs = DV, Apple Intermediate Codec, DVCPro, DVCProHD, HDV, XDCAM, ProRes (Proxy, LT, HQ etc), Uncompressed 8bit, Uncompressed 10bit
Common Frame sizes = 720×486, 720×576, 1280×720, 1440×1080 (thin raster HD), 1920×1080 (full raster HD)
Common Frame rates = 23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 50, 59.94.Some of these work better in certain combinations than others. Look at the FCP Easy Setup menu for a guide.
Wow, that was longer than I was expecting.
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No Blackmagic card. This project originated on a MacBook Pro.
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