Codec and Viewer issues on FCP7 with MB Pro

[Michael Gissing]

Just search this forum for H264. neither your clips, nor your sequence settings should be H264.

If all the footage is 25 fps, then at least you have one less headache. My advice is to have sequence and clips all in ProRes422 720 x 576.

[Andy Mees]

This has got to be a windup right? Brilliant. Lol

[Michael Brown]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for that. Didi it, had to re-render a few of the files but all in all it was just legwork and it works!

Got an answer to my viewer issue (question b)) by any chance? That remains to be solved as I cannot find a setting anymore to playback in full screen, even if the DV camera that goes to the calibrated tube is disconnected.

Michael Brown

[Michael Brown]

I don’t really get what you mean, Andy. Wanna explain ?

Michael Brown

[Andy Mees]

No worries Michael, and genuinely no offense was intended … I started to try to answer your thread earlier and as I worked through it it just seemed to get funnier and funnier inasmuch as you had seemingly gone out of your way to do absolutely everything wrong. It got to the point where I search back through some of your earlier posts … those showed you were not a complete beginner, so it suddenly occurred to me that you had posted here with the most outlandish scenario that you could think up purely for the entertainment value in watching the responses. Apparently I thought wrong! You gotta admit, looked at it from that angle it was pretty funny 🙂

[Michael Brown]

Andy, I am literally in stitches. There is no LOL abbreviation to match that. You’re completely forgiven for the misunderstanding if you promise to have another look at my case. I’m dead serious, and no, I’m not an absolute beginner, but I am insomuch that I got very suddenly faced with a big leap from 4.5 HD to 7 and the whole HD and ProRes issues that I know little to nothing about. I had always worked in SD.

Some of the old threads you’ve discovered must date back to when I was running 4.5 on a 12″ Powerbook. Believe it or not, I produced a helluvalot of stuff from that little box that I gave away last year, and the damn thing is still running despite a crashed superdrive, bent casing with dents in it from tumbling down a flight of stairs and the whole works! I still kind of miss that machine that ran like hell for at least 5 years.

So now the old man is trying to catch up. Hence, my playback issue is serious, and if you want to waste a few lines on what I’d done all wrong here, it’s at least worth a beer to me if we ever get a chance (I’ll gladly make a full meal out of that, but you’d have to come to Hamburg, wherever you may be located (GB?). I can’t afford to fly you in just yet 😉

Michael Brown

[Andy Mees]

You’re on 🙂

So lets start at the very beginning. What are the delivery requirements? You’ve got a variety of footage from mixed sources, DVD, DV, HDV and others? How much of each? I note you’ve scaled up the majority to 1280×720, an HD resolution … and scaled down the HDV to match that. Do you need to be doing this?

Regarding the playback via Firewire … your current sequence setting is H264 1280×720 but your Video playback setting is Apple Firewire PAL, this means that FCP is trying to convert the footage between formats in realtime for your external video playback whilst simultaneously handle the display to the Canvas window … but your machine just doesn’t have the computing power to do that, thats why you are not getting smooth playback in either the Canvas or the monitor. If your source and sequence codec were less processor intensive then you might have better luck, but its still not going to be pretty.

Hope this is a good start.
Andy

[Michael Brown]

Hi Andy,

I had to take a break since my heating went down and they’re tearing the place up to replace it as well as the piping that goes through the chimney, all of this by sub degrees at night and consequently no heat 😉 and these are the last cold days to cut back the fruit trees so I’m having a hard time keeping up and on schedule.

To answer your questions:

The delivery requirements are streamable web release and a couple of Quicktimes that are good enough looking to be watched computer full screen on a DVD-Rom EPK for a rock trio. So I guess I didn’t need to upscale just to match DVD footage. But I wanted to stay in 1280 x 720 to match the HDV footage that was delivered as .MTS files, and also because one of the cam’s footage was delivered as ProRes422 decoded Quicktime. These may not be good reasons, but this is how I scaled my footage before importing it to FCP. I was also at a loss to understand what the hell the .MTS encoding was, and a lot of my footage came from that camera, a small consumer HDV camcorder that delivered a ‘decent’ picture, it could have been a Panasonic… I just happen to know that that footage was shot on the 1280 x 720 preset instead of the highest (I ignore what size that was) in order to save storage room on the camera’s limited cards. I did not succeed in getting this footage into FCP with MPEG Streamclip, hence I purchased the Wondershare Video Converter for 30 bucks or so, and I believe that Wondershare recommended the 1280×720 H.264 orginally. After Michael’s post I succeed in exporting to ProRes422 nonetheless. The other three cams are a mystery to me since I was not on the shoot and I just got 2 H.264 and 1 ProRes coded files on a stick. Then I wanted to combine H.264 SD 16:9 footage from 2 music videos in the program. These I had and I upscaled them to 1280×720 as well. I only went ProRes all the way (reexporting via QT) once I had Michael’s first reply that led to success in terms of playback smoothness.

Regarding full screen playback, once I moved my footage to ProRes, I also changed my Sequence Setting to 1280 x 720, Aspect Ratio HDTV 720p (16:9) (I have not tried HDTV 1080i 16:9, but that’s the only other option that would make any sense), Pixel Aspect Ration = Square, Field Dominance = none, Quicktime Video Settings / Compressor = ApleProRes422, Quality 100%, and I still can’t playback full screen.

I’m doin’ somethin’ wrong…

Hope to hear from you soon, thanks again,
Michael.

Michael Brown

[Andy Mees]

Ok … so at the majority of the footage is HDV 720p50 which you’ve now transcoded to Apple ProRes 720p50. The remaining footage from a variety of sources has now also been transcoded to Apple ProRes 720p50. Basically, all your footage is now Apple ProRes 720p50 … is that correct?

And you are editing this in a matching timeline. Can you confirm then that you are now having no problem with the edit … all is playing back well and looking nice in the Canvas window, no stalling at edit points etc?

You note that “I still can’t playback full screen” … Can I ask what you mean by that specifically? Do you mean in the Canvas window, in Digital Cinema Desktop mode, or is issue that you want to be able to view the edit on your external SD monitor, connected via a DV camera to the MBP’s FireWire output?

To do the latter FCP has to downscale and convert in realtime the 16:9 (HD) Apple ProRes 720p50 source to a 4:3 letterboxed (SD) Apple Firewire PAL signal. Thats quite processor intensive. Your MBP may not have the processing power to do that. You have already set your View menu > Video Playback setting to Apple FireWire PAL, correct, and have set View menu > External Video to All Frames. Do you get a stuttering output to your SD monitor or no output at all? You can try turning off Desktop playback (disable playback in the Canvas window) by going to your Final Cut Pro menu > Audio/Video Settings window and unchecking “MIrror on Desktop” under Playback Output in the A/V Devices tab. This may allow you to get a watchable realtime downconvert, but it may not be ideal …

… And this is where those I/O boxes you’ve been reading about come in to play, thats what they are for .. they allow you to monitor your HD output directly from FCP to a suitable monitor without asking FCP to perform complex signal conversions, the I/O box does that for you. Unfortunately you need to be able to connect them to your Mac. Laptops are somewhat hampered by a lack of expansion options. Connectivity for the next generation of laptops looks promising with the newly announced “Thunderbolt” connection across the whole line of MBP’s. But for older models you’d generally want a MBP with an ExpressCard slot .. that gives you access to the most affordable portable I/O options to date. Does your 15″ MBP have an ExpressCard slot … or is it one with an SD card slot? If it doesn’t have an ExpressCard slot then you still have options, but they will be more expensive. The AJA IoHD is a superb device that hooks up via FW800, similarly the Motu V4HD. Or the Matrox MXO (not MXO2) which connects using the DVI (or to Display Port via a DVI adaptor).

Hope this is helping to clarify what may be the problem, and some possible options to consider for either now or later.
Cheers
Andy

[Michael Brown]

Hi Andy,

The heat is back on and I’m back at the drawing board. Thanks for your reply, here goes mine:

1st §: correct.

2nd § correct: playback in the canvas and viewer is smooth. Timeline appears to match.

3rd §: 2nd & 3rd options, i. e; Cinema Digital Desktop mode (MB Pro screen or external LCD (Fujitsu Siemens 19″) and/or external SD monitor via FW (via 2nd port on FW800 WD 1 Tera hard disk and FW400 to FW800 adapter). Well I’ll be damned. It works, even leaving mirroring on. I could swear I’ve been there and back a number of times, but yes, it runs smoothly on the canvas and the external SD monitor both! And now all of a sudden Digital Cinema Desktop works main and preview and even raw. I’m at a loss to understand why because all these settings are history to me – I’ve been through them and they are no different than my previous MB and FCP versions. Hence 2 theories:
a) I cleared up a lot of space on my external hard drive that was getting full (800 Gb out of 1000), now it’s less than 1/2 full; does that have anything to do with the playback issue? or…
b) with my past set-up, the order in which I turned on the DV camera for playing back on the SD tube and refreshing A/V device once had an effect on the camera being recognized or not. Now it doesn’t appear to. But is that a theory?
c) I was just plain doing something wrong and I don’t want to admit it or can’t remember and I need a youth cure 😉

4th and last §: Thanks for all the clarification! I have an SD card slot, and I just had to buy the new MB Pro (I was happier with the previous all metal matte screen model but the logicboard burned out on me suddenly and I was in a hurry to replace it at a reasonable price), so I’m not going to invest just now, but I’ll come back to this thread when I do. For now every thing is working hunky dory again. If you find time to add your grain of salt to my 2/3 theories, I’ll be glad to hear from you. Till then,

MANY THANKS, WHAT A PRO!

Michael.

Michael Brown