H.264 rendering problem in FCP 5???

[Mark Maness]

I’m not totally positive but I think you need to have 10.4 and Quicktime 7.04 to render H.264 properly. Yes, there were some bugs that needing correcting and I haven’t seen anymore since I upgraded to the latest.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[Michael Alberts]

I can’t be reading your post right. You stated that you’ve got your FCP sequence codec setting set to H.264. I must have misread that. There are no easy setup in FCP that would allow for a H.264 sequence setting. Why? Because that would be insane. H.264 is a web delivery medium and is extremely render intensive. It’s about a 6:1 render time for H.264.
So, I must be misinterpreting what you’re saying. Could you restate your problem.

Michael Alberts
Ambidextrous Productions, Inc.

[Colin Williams]

Wow. You have some serious experience. Want to give me some?

Maybe I am insane. However, everything I’ve read about H.264 does not necessarily point to web outlets as a purpose for the codec. I just underrstood that it was a new algorythm with the implication that the quality was superb to previous mpeg standards and filesizes had been significantly reduced. So, I guess I was trying to save space and retain quality with a ratio not to out of whack. In my worthless opinion, the H.264 looks just as good as the Animation codec to my eye with about 20% of the resulting file size. If not more.

If it helps at all, this is what I read: “The intent of H.264/AVC project has been to create a standard that would be capable of providing good video quality at bit rates that are substantially lower (e.g., half or less) than what previous standards would need (e.g., relative to MPEG-2, H.263, or MPEG-4 Part 2), and to do so without so much of an increase in complexity as to make the design impractical (excessively expensive) to implement. An additional goal was to do this in a flexible way that would allow the standard to be applied to A VERY WIDE VARIETY OF APPLICATIONS (e.g., for both low and high bit rates, and low and high resolution video) and to work well on a very wide variety of networks and systems (e.g., for broadcast, DVD storage, RTP/IP packet networks, and ITU-T multimedia telephony systems).” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC)

So it seems there might be more uses for the codec other than web applications. Who knows?

I just wanted something better quality than DV-NTSC, lower filesize than 10/8-bit (Blackmagic) and Animation that could translate well to another mpeg (that being 2) format for DVD encoding.

Does that really sound insane? If so, I’ll take that big white pill… right over there! And where’s Jiggles, my fat, pink teddy bear?!

Cheers,
Colin Williams
http://www.pensivecrow.com

[Michael Alberts]

Take a chill pill. Sarcasm apparently doesn’t go over very well with you. As to your problem…

The product description you quoted is entirely correct. All the methods it discussed are delivery or distribution methods. No where in that description does it describe the codec as useful as a multimedia editing codec. H.264 by it’s very nature is extremely render intensive. For high quality H.264 the render time is about 6:1. In the near future I’m sure some company may come out with a dedicated real time hardware encoder for H.264 but that still doesn’t mean that it will be practical for editing. This would mainly be for broadcast delivery environments.
H.264 as you probably know has been ratified as one of the two codecs to be used in both the HD DVD and Blue-ray Disc formats. Again, this is a delivery medium, not editing.

If you are looking for a codec to cut down on file size and still remain useful for editing the only one that comes to mind is PhotoJPEG. However, with PJPEG you won’t get any RT effects in FCP. Long ago we used to use the Aurora Igniter cards with FCP. The Igniters were fantastic. The Igniter utilized the MJPEG codec, but Apple more or less forced everyone over to DV and uncompressed if they wanted any type of RT effects. It was technically possible for Aurora incorporate on board hardware to accelerate the MJPEG for RT but that wasn’t economically feasible compared to the competition.

If you’re worried about file size why not use DV. Drives are so cheap these days. You can pack about 55 hours of DV material onto a 800GB firewire drive.

Michael Alberts
Ambidextrous Productions, Inc.

[Colin Williams]

I should take a chill pill.

This is for DVD as a deliverable. So you’re saying use DV as the editing codec? Cool. But before I export out to Compressor or a movie for Squeeze, do I then change to a higher quality codec? Or do I export the sequence as DV and then compress that one even further in the aformentioned programs.

Some of the source files were encoded with h.264 out of After Effects. (It actually renders faster than the Animation codec. or maybe it’s my imagination)

I am using a Blackmagic card, but that doesn’t seem to speed things up very much unless it was captured that way. Obviously. But if I’m running back and forth between After Effects, Photoshop, FCP, Compressor, DVD Studio Pro and so forth, how can I determine what is the best way to keep file conversion consistent and yield the best results as I skip between apps while mixing graphics and compositing etc. A consistent “fileflow” to avoid codec misrepresentation, which I’ve clearly exhibited already it seems, and allow easy integration.

Is this making sense? I usually don’t read over what I wrote. Otherwise, I would spend way to much time editing my own thoughts and therefore adding to the crunch that I’m always trying to avoid.

Anyway.

I really appreciate your help on this matter and taking the time out of you busy schedule to assist me.

Cheers,
Colin Williams
https://www.pensivecrow.com

[Colin Williams]

I should take a chill pill.

This is for DVD as a deliverable. So you’re saying use DV as the editing codec? Cool. But before I export out to Compressor or a movie for Squeeze, do I then change to a higher quality codec? Or do I export the sequence as DV and then compress that one even further in the aformentioned programs.

Some of the source files were encoded with h.264 out of After Effects. (It actually renders faster than the Animation codec. or maybe it’s my imagination)

I am using a Blackmagic card, but that doesn’t seem to speed things up very much unless it was captured that way. Obviously. But if I’m running back and forth between After Effects, Photoshop, FCP, Compressor, DVD Studio Pro and so forth, how can I determine what is the best way to keep file conversion consistent and yield the best results as I skip between apps while mixing graphics and compositing etc. A consistent “fileflow” to avoid codec misrepresentation, which I’ve clearly exhibited already it seems, and allow easy integration.

Is this making sense? I usually don’t read over what I wrote. Otherwise, I would spend way to much time editing my own thoughts and therefore adding to the crunch that I’m always trying to avoid.

Anyway.

I really appreciate your help on this matter and taking the time out of you busy schedule to assist me.

Cheers,
Colin Williams
https://www.pensivecrow.com