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Exporting image sequence in ProRes 4444 from QT Pro gives black movie
(While not exactly a FCP question, wasn’t sure what other form to put this in.)
In QT Pro, I’m exporting a movie clip made from a tiff image sequence, for import into FCP. If I export using the ProRes 4444 codec, all I get is a black movie file. If I export using other codecs, it works fine. Any ideas what might be wrong and how to fix this? It had worked before, can’t think of anything that’s different now.
Thanks!
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3 Replies
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Does your image sequence have an alpha channel? If not than I wouldn’t use 444. You can try ProRes HQ, which I have found to be a satisfactory codec.
Brian Wheeler
Senior Editor
KXRM / KXTU -
Thanks for your reply, Brian.
Here’s a weirder thing: the VFX place that was sending me the image sequence tried it again adding an alpha channel, and that solved it. Which is bizarre, because it has worked before with other image sequences they’ve sent without an alpha. So I suspect something else was different too, but I have no time to investigate further, it’s solved.
Just as an aside about the codec: all my source footage is 12-bit ProRes 4444, which is how it was originally captured (on an ARRI Alexa). Even though ProRes 422 (HQ) looks great and I agree that you’d be hard pressed to distinguish the difference a lot of the time, we’re about to color grade and it’s of course always best to start with the most information possible, to minimize degradation. Moreover, this will primarily be seen digitally projected on large screens, so I want to maintain the highest possible image quality through the post process.
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P.S. By “something else was different,” I mean perhaps something inadvertent that we didn’t even notice. Who knows? Maybe the computer was just in a better mood.
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