-
FCP not rendering out smoothcam filter…
Hi guys,
Long time reader… first time poster. Creative Cow has helped me out many times!
I’m running FCP 7.0.3 on an i7 MacBook Pro and I’m having (a lot of) trouble getting the smoothcam filter to work properly.
I imported h.264 .mov’s onto a ProRes422 timeline… rendered… edited my video… added the smoothcam filter to a few of my shots… rendered… everything looks great! Smoothcam shots play back nice and smooth in the viewer!
However, when I export using Quicktime conversion back into an h.264 .mov (or any other codec, eg. a ProRes422 .mov), the shots that I applied the smoothcam filter to are horribly juttery, and look worse than the original footage.
I’ve tried sending the job to Compressor to use frame controls, however, it doesn’t even start rendering and fails with “Failed: Final Cut Pro generated an error or unexpectedly quit”. FCP didn’t quit, so it was an error of some kind.
I’ve tried exporting the video in FCP as a self contained Quicktime movie to drop into compressor, but the smoothcam shots in that video come out terribly juttery too.
I searched the web, and found people in the Apple forums having the same problem… one person said they got around it by using the “share” feature in FCP. I took one of the smoothcam clips and put it into another timeline and “shared” it to my desktop in ProRes. Oddly enough, the exported shot came out nice and smooth, just like in the viewer playback. So I tried to “share” my entire edited timeline, which produced a huge file that finally has smooth smoothcam shots in it… but all my other regular shots are choppy in the video!! Lol, it’s not fair… When my video renders out normally, the smoothcam doesn’t work… and when I “share” the video, the smoothcam works, but the rest of my video is choppy!!
Any ideas on how to get my video to render out correctly?
-
8 Replies
-
Your problem is likely that FCP doesn’t support editing h.264 files natively, which is what you did… even rendering them to ProRes isn’t the way to get them there. You need to transcode the source files to prores first, then edit them in a prores sequence.
Jerry
Apple Certified Trainer, Producer, Writer, Director Editor, Gun for Hire and other things. I ski. My Blog: https://blogs.creativecow.net/Jerry-Hofmann
DVD:https://store.creativecow.net/p/81/jerry_hofmanns_final_cut_system_setup
8-Core 3.0 Intel Mac Pro, Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D, AJA Io HD, 17″ MBP, Matrox MXO2 with MAX Cinema Displays
-
Hey Jerry,
Thanks for your reply! I think you’re right, and I’ll be doing that for future projects… though I’m happy to report that using the “share” option in FCP 7.0.3 finally worked!! The original export using share/ prores created a huge 6GB file that was probably stuttering during playback because the data-rate was so high. I tried the share/ YouTube preset and it worked perfectly, smoothcam shots and all! I’m now using a custom preset to get what I would have normally chosen when exporting through Quicktime conversion. Life is good.
-
If your render is smooth, you can always find that render file and import it as a clip and replace the original. The render is after all just a ProRes file based on your sequence settings so it will not need to be rendered again. To make it small, just render the smoothcam clip on its own.
-
Hello
I’m getting the same problem. All original files were transcoded to Apple Pro Res and smooth cam seems fine in the edit when played through FCP. Although when rendering the whole project to one big pro res self-contained movie the smooth cam footage is all jittery and juddery… I want to render out the 30 minute video for upload to Youtube in 1080.
Any advice?
I tired rendering just the smooth cam bit as one file in the current settings (pro resLT) and it’s still juddering.
How can I fix this?
Thanks!!
-
Try adding the Shift Fields filter (Effects > Video Filters > Video > Shift Fields).
Post back
Andy -
Hey Chris, thank you so much for your tip! we tried everything and it finally worked!! I invite you to visit our website https://www.rinconesdemitierra.com. Thanks!
Roxana
-
I also had this problem, having to re-render things over and over. I’ve discovered that if you apply the smoothcam to the clip BEFORE you add it to the timeline the problem doesn’t occur.
-
Just had the same problem….really annoying.
Jerry Hofmann is right – the problem is probably caused by Final Cuts hostility towards mpeg/mp4 files.
Even when you transcode them to Apple proress they still do not function properly (!!)I shared the smooth-cam clips to my desktop, then imported them, and put them into the timeline, instead of the clips with the filter on them.
After exporting the whole timeline, it finally worked. The clips were just as smooth, as on the time lime of final cut 7.0.3Can’t believe final cut fails to export the smooth cam filter on it’s own..
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up