getting dropped frames too frequently in one of my projects

[Shane Ross]

[raju bhai] “For my problem project, my clips are in h.264 format, 1920×1080, .mov extension, 23.98 fps. And I also have clips in the same project that are a different format. These are h.264, 320×240, .mp4 extension, 25 fps.”

FCP 7 doesn’t work with H.264 files. All sorts of problems when trying to work with that format. This is just one of them. There are also sync issues to deal with. Never edit H.264 files in FCP 7…you always need to convert them to ProRes 422 before you bring them in and start editing.

[raju bhai] “Also, when I export the timeline to a quicktime file, the export plays on both quicktime or VLC very weird and jerky with frozen frames and white garbling, etc.”

Yup…see…another one of the H.264 issues. FCP 7 and H.264 don’t mix

Shane
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[Raju Bhai]

Hey thanks Shane!

So the clips that are 320×240 are poorer quality to begin with (downloaded from youtube)….and the 1920×1080 clips are from an HD video camera but it isn’t a high end camera, not like a canon d-series.

So does it make sense to transcode them to apple prores 422, or would you recommend another codec option?

Also, does it matter that the timebase is different for each group of clips? One group is 23.98 and the 320×240 group is 25fps. If you recommend that all the clips in the timeline be the same frame rate, then how would you recommend to transform the frame rate?

[Raju Bhai]

Hi,

In this project two thirds footage was shot on canon 7d (or 5d). It is: h.264, 1920×1080, 23.98fps. The other one third footage was downloaded from youtube and is: h.264, 320×240, 25fps. The audio is different for the 2 as well, the first one is 48khz and the lower quality one is 44.1khz….but i’m replacig the entire audio track anyway (it’s a music video), so not sure if it matters that the audio sampling rates are diff for the 2 sets of footage.
So i imagine i need to trascode everything into apple prores 422. Does that mean transcoding the lower quality youtube footage as well into prores? I should probably make all the footage the same setting right? probably 1920×1080, 23.98fps, 44khz for everything?

[Raju Bhai]

Hi! it’s a music video I am making. And the target for this one is Youtube.
Should i transcode these into regular apple proress 422 with FCP Compressor? two thirds of the clips were shot on canon 5d and the other one third are the inferior quality downloaded footage, but seeing that all the footage needs to be uniform then i guess i need to transcode everything including the inferior footage to proress 422, right?

yes, a hot mess alright!

Oh! one other thing, i have already edited about 80% of the video when all the problems started arising and compounding. I don’t want to have to re-edit from scratch.
So i am looking at this as a possible solution:
1 – I create a new folder for the transcoded footage on my drive and rename the footage when trascoding to exactly the same as the original names.
2 – then I create a new timeline sequence with new sequence settings that conform to the transcoded footage, then copy the sequence of clips in the bad timeline and paste them into the new timeline, then reconnect the clips in this new timeline to the transcoded ones.

Do you think that should work?