DVCPRO HD Wrong Resolution and Pixel Aspect Ratio

[Jeremy Garchow]

There’s been some talk of this on the FCP forum. Apparently it’s affecting only some people and not others. I did my own tests today and didn’t have a problem with anything, even 2 hour long timelines, in both FCP 5&6, DVCPro HD (5&6) and ProRes (6).

Jeremy

[John Pale]

Its not the length of the export that matters.

Some, or even just one, of the clips in your timeline is erroneously being read by Quicktime as having square pixels instead of DVCPRO HD’s anamorphic pixels.

I determined this by gradually exporting sections of my timeline…getting the correct result…until…BAM…I found the one clip that caused the export to go awry.

Add the Broadcast safe filter to that clip, and the export works correctly. It doesnt have to be the Broadcast Safe filter…any filter, even one that changes nothing, will fix the problem, as FCP now reads the render file instead of the original media.

I believe, randomly, Quicktime is messing up in the metadata department and this is causing the issue. I had several timelines which exhibited this problem and there was no pattern to the offending clips. They all appeared normal in their properties (the correct DVCPRO HD pixel aspect and size).

[Frederic Lumiere]

I honestly don’t think it’s the case.

Took an hour movie which was rendered a while ago (pre Pro Apps update) in DVCPRO HD 720p60 59.94, dropped it in a timeline – no need to render.

Exported 5 secs of it – no need to rener

Exported whole – needs render

F

[Frederic Lumiere]

I honestly don’t think it’s the case.

Took an hour movie which was rendered a while ago (pre Pro Apps update) in DVCPRO HD 720p60 59.94, dropped it in a timeline – no need to render.

Exported 5 secs of it – no need to rener

Exported whole – needs render

F

[Walter Biscardi]

[John Pale] “Its not the length of the export that matters.

Some, or even just one, of the clips in your timeline is erroneously being read by Quicktime as having square pixels instead of DVCPRO HD’s anamorphic pixels.”

I would agree with this assessment. There is at least one clip in your timeline that is not the same as the rest and it is causing the entire timeline to export in the wrong pixel resolution.

One question I have is why you’re exporting the entire 1 hour timeline as a self contained movie? Are you taking it to another post house to lay off to tape?

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Frederic Lumiere]

[walter biscardi] “I would agree with this assessment. There is at least one clip in your timeline that is not the same as the rest and it is causing the entire timeline to export in the wrong pixel resolution.

Made sense to me but my latest test proves that it isn’t the case. Again, I only have one clip in the timeline and exporting only 5 sec is fine (no need to render when reimporting) where exporting the complete movie (44:50 min) isn’t (needs rendering when reimporting in the same timeline!).

[walter biscardi] One question I have is why you’re exporting the entire 1 hour timeline as a self contained movie? Are you taking it to another post house to lay off to tape?”

I placed only one clip in the timeline just for a test.

[John Pale]

[Lumiere] “Made sense to me but my latest test proves that it isn’t the case. Again, I only have one clip in the timeline and exporting only 5 sec is fine (no need to render when reimporting) where exporting the complete movie (44:50 min) isn’t (needs rendering when reimporting in the same timeline!).”

I guess this bug is even more random and weird than I thought!

I have not had it re-occur since it happened to me a month or two ago.

In my case, it was definitely not due to the length of the export. Once I took care of the problem clips the long exports went fine.

[Keith Koby]

We’ve been experieincing this problem since upgrading a month or so ago. I originally thought that it only affected media captured with 5.1.4 and imported into 6. I now doubt that, whereas, I believe we have now encountered the problem with media captured in 6.0.1.

I have also encountered a similar problem in nesting timelines. Option clicking a nest to play it back in the viewer has the same strobed playback problem as one of the exported-reimported files described above. Also has the same pixel aspect ratio and frame size errors.

Having said that, I’m thinking it has more to do with FCP than QT.

off topic: we’ve seen the following problem with nests as well as duplicate sequences. see below link. And we saw this problem between ppc and intel long before FCP 6. Could the above and below all be render file related issues?

https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306068

[Frederic Lumiere]

The issue is when non DVCPRO HD clips are included…

There are workarounds (kind of).

Here’s a link to a pdf on the issue:

https://lumieremedia.com/dvcprohdbug/Lumiere_DVCPROHD_BUG.pdf

Frederic

[Jeremy Garchow]

Man, this is awesome. Did you send this to the Apple feedback page?

Thanks for typing this up.