How to use different formats in one timeline?

[Matt Hannon]

Thanks David,

I have been trying a few different settings and havn’t had any luck so far – but as you said, trial and error.

I realise its not ideal to have all these different formats, but unfortunately there’s not a lot I can about it at this stage.. ha..

I shall carry on and hopefully have some luck, thanks for your time…

m

[Bernie Henry]

Hi everyone,
I’ve battled with this problem now for some time. I’m editing videos that come directly from stock footage. Unfortunately I do not have a choice in the chosen footage so I end up with so many different types of formats and lord only knows what codecs. Here is a list of some of the formats I am mixing:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/11848673/Video%20sizes.xlsx

(If you cannot open the link basically the footage varies from NTSC, PAL, HD and all different sizes from 320 x 180 up to 1920 x 1080) Most of the time I wouldn’t have to mix two such extremities but often I am mixing a 320 x 180 with a 640 x 360.

I often use a sequence setting of HDV720p, import this footage and edit (I don’t ever expect to edit without the rendering red line!) I then export to the relative size required. This is crude I know, and I can hear the tut tut’s but I really don’t know what else I can do. If I transcode all the footage before importing to FCP, I”m afraid of distorting the various footage and as no single piece of footage is more dominant than the other I aim for the best setting possible. I also need the text to look good over the video and have found that smaller sized sequence settings pixilate the text.

If anyone has any tips, disdainful outbursts or recommendations, I welcome all!

[David Roth weiss]

Just don’t show your finished product on a television, DVD, or broadcast it you’ll be fine.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Marcus Koch]

Granted all these posts are from several years ago, in case anyone reading these, i just ran into this very issue. and trying to figure out how to work with different codecs on the same timeline in FCP7 its been 2 days of udder (cow joke) frustration. all different formats of video , all different aspect ratios etc etc. I took them into streamclip and converted and exported each clip as a .MOV file……. again, still the same issue. each file, even tho its a now a quicktime movie file. seem to be retaining the orginal characteristics. and still jam up the computer if 2 different clips are in the timeline. so i’m trying to figure out how to tailor each clip, so they all match, trying the above information..

HOWEVER, i did discover a work around that seems to be working. i dragged all clips forcefully into a single timeline. rendered them out (which took a long darn time) using the Biggest highest quality clip to set my timeline setting to, so it’s all one continuous stream of clips, then exported the entire thing as a self contained .mov file. then took it into Compressor, and and converted the whole shabang as an apple prorez 422 file….

so far this is working. and i am able to cut as if it is one piece of footage. probably not the right way to go about this. but if you are having this issue. with multiple types of footage. give it a go.

[David Donnenfield]

Marcus,
I’m glad you picked up on that old thread. I’m faced with a multiple format, CODEC, etc. situation now. None of the other posts appealed to me as much as your solution. I just may give yours a shot. It’s either that or throwing everything into Premiere which, I understand, will digest anything on one timeline. So, many thanks for continuing this old but still relevant discussion.
Happy New Year.
David

[David Roth weiss]

David,

There are innumerable downsides to using Marcus’ approach, with the primary being, if any single clip you’ve transcoded doesn’t look as expected on the timeline, or if a batch of transcoded clips don’t look right (very common when winging transcodes from many different file types), you’ll have a bear of a time tracing back to your cam original if you create a single file on output from your timeline.

If you plan to work in this industry you’d best take the time to figure out the proper way to batch transcode each and every file type, and you should test each file type separately to determine what if anything requires different settings, as there is no one size fits all when transcoding different file types to a single mezzanine codec.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[David Donnenfield]

Well, the alternative is to just enter the Premiere environment. Right? As I understand it, you can load just about any format onto a Premiere timeline and it just accepts it. Do I have that right?
David