Green frames when exporting QuickTime Movie from FCP

[Eric Strand]

Are you editing and exporting in H.264?

[Brendan Fay]

Yep, H.264. My sequence settings are identical to the raw movie clips and the exported movie as well:

H.264, 1920 x 1080, Millions
FPS: 23.98
Data Rate: 46.85 Mbit/s

[Rafael Amador]

The green frames are due to the H264 stuff.
Is not supported by FC so every kind of undesirable effect can happen when edited.
[Brendan Fay] “For some reason, this problem goes away if I check “recompress all frames” however this is not a desirable solution since this cuts the data rate by a factor of ten,”
I don´t understand this.
Whatever you check or not the “Recompress all frames”, the export will be with the sequence codec and this is what will set the data rate.
If your exported files have lower data rate than the original is because you are not setting the same data rate (46.850Kbps).
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Brendan Fay]

Interesting, thanks for pointing that out. Well, the source video is H.264, so naturally when I made a new sequence I just had the sequence settings automatically adjust to the first clip I dragged in. So, I kind of assumed it could handle the H.264. Now if I manually inspect the sequence settings, I see that it’s using H.264 for quicktime movie export. Based on what you’ve told me, I can see two options:

1) Figure out why the data rate is being reduced by a factor of ten when I export. Nowhere in any of the settings do I see anywhere to manually set the data rate (except for a box that lets you “limit” the data rate, which is of course not what I want to do, I want to leave it as is.) Or..

2) Don’t use H.264. In which case, what should I use?

Any advice? Thanks!

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Brendan,
the best way to manage your stuff is converting to Prores.
If you are using plain h264 files, MPGStreamclip is a very good optio for batch converting.
If you are using full camera folders structure, use the Log&transfer function in FC.
Don´t miss Shane´s tutorial:
https://library.creativecow.net/ross_shane/tapeless-workflow_fcp-7/1

[Brendan Fay] ” Nowhere in any of the settings do I see anywhere to manually set the data rate (except for a box that lets you “limit” the data rate, which is of course not what I want to do, I want to leave it as is.) Or..”
When exporting H264 you should always use the “limit data rate” option otherwise you won´t have control on the file size.
The quality for any GOP based codec (H264, MPEG-2,..) will depend on two elements:
– Data-rate
– Key-frames frecuency.
As long as you don´t have elements to decide which is the best number for Key-frames, set this always in AUTO and make Multi-pass, so the application will calculate the most convenient.
Then set manually the data-rate up to the quality and file size you want to get.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com