Blurry Transition After Export

[Bobby Hall]

Yes, my camera only shoots progressive. My files were shot in 29.97 fps, even though in my camera settings it says 30 fps.

So I think when I import my footage into FCP 7, it thinks it’s interlaced for some reason. I have no idea why. When I watch the raw files I can pretty much tell it’s not interlaced. But when I drag the files onto the timeline and I have it match the settings of my files, the field dominance is set to Upper. When I export a video with that setting, it’s interlaced, and when I change it to None, then the video plays fine.

[Nick Meyers]

weird.
have a look at the item properties of your clips.
are thy upper?

to check for interlaced on a computer, open the files in QUicktime, look for some rapid movement,
and lok for that tell-tale combing.
you won’t see it in FCP unless the canvas is set to 100%:
fast way to do that: select canvas, press and hold the H key

[Michael Gissing]

Are you using Log & Transfer to convert them into ProRes? If so then it may be mis reading the interlace flag. DSLRs are nearly always shooting progressive. If you are just using the H264 camera files then FCP is really poor with that codec and getting interlaced/ progressive wrong is certainly possible but H264 in an FCP7 timeline could cause all sorts of edit, sync and render issues.

In this case it was simply the wrong sequence settings

[Bobby Hall]

I use MPEG Streamclip to convert my h.264 files to prores, and I uncheck “interlaced scaling”. When I import the files, it lists the field dominance as Upper. I also imported an h.264 file to see what its field dominance would be, and it said it was Upper also. If DSLRs shoot progressive, why would it list the field dominance as Upper instead of None?

[Bobby Hall]

Thanks Dave. Yeah in the brower the clips are listed as “Upper (Odd)”. Do you know why FCP 7 does this if the clips are really progressive?

[David Roth weiss]

Bobby,

I strongly suspect MPEG Streamclip is at the heart of the issue. I like Streamclip for ripping DVDs, but I personally would never use it as my goto transcoder/encoder. What is it that you like about Streamclip for transcoding?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[Nick Meyers]

could be they are Psf, “Progressive segmented frame”
2 fields, both of them the same.

nick

[Bobby Hall]

David,

I don’t think that MPEG Streamclip is the problem because when I import the h.264 files that my camera shoots into FCP (without converting them to prores) just to see what their properties are, the browser lists their field order as Upper too.

I use MPEG Streamclip because I had a project I was working on where I had to rip a lot of footage from DVDs and I just got used to the program! What do you suggest I use? Compressor?

[Nick Meyers]

“I also imported an h.264 file to see what its field dominance would be, and it said it was Upper also”

the original clips are displaying as having a field dominance in FCP,
so i’m not so sure Streamclip is a problem here.

in my experience, Streamclip is more stable than Compressor with larger batches.

Bobby, that interlaced scaling would not be an issue as you are not scaling the clips.

nick

[Michael Gissing]

I suspect the camera files are not indicating anything in field dominance in their metadata so the system guesses ‘upper’ in the absence of correct embedded info. That’s why you have to manually change it.