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Importing mp4 into mocha resulting in Black Screen/No Footage
I have a jpeg sequence I rendered at 15 fps and as an h264 (mp4).
When I open the file in mocha however, the result is a black screen with no trace of footage anywhere.
I’m not sure what is causing this problem. Both the FPS-rate in AE and Mocha match (AE was set to render @ 15 FPS, and Mocha likewise), so I’m not sure what else could be causing this problem.
I did have luck rendering the file as a JPEG sequence in AE, but it got super messy and risks creating continuity problems (I want to track splines in an h264 file, and copy them into an h264 file).
Another thing I noticed was that I imported 73 frames into AE to render at 15 fps, but when I import the h264 file into mocha, it tells me there are only 40 frames!
Anyone have any idea what is causing the problem, and what is going on in Mocha’s mind when it calculates frame numbers?
An Artist interested in the past, stuck in the present.
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6 Replies
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My advice is: don’t use H264 or any mpeg-compressed video for motion graphics input. It’s a very good format for delivery (output), but can have plenty of problems when it comes to workflow. A jpeg sequence is better — a png or tga sequence is better than jpeg, though, as they have less compression.
A lot of animators work with videos rendered to the Quicktime Animation codec. Other common codecs for source or input video is PNG, Photo-JPEG (set to maximum quality), or ProRes422 (I’m less a fan of this last one, as it works in YUV color space, so there’s some unwanted color conversion happening).
If you convert your h264 video into one of the above codecs, I’m 95% certain most of the problems you listed will simply dissolve away….
Ben Unguren
Motion Graphics & Editing
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hey ben, thanks for your response.
Yes, I tried JPEG Sequence and it DOES work, BUT it produces all these frames. And why is it that when I render the JPEG sequence, I start out with 73 frames (basically 73 pictures) and then when rendered I get around 40 to 53 depending on speed of FPS?
An Artist interested in the past, stuck in the present.
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Make sure you’re interpreting your image sequence correctly. If you’re in a 24fps comp but interpret your image sequence as 30fps, then every 5th frame will be dropped in the 24fps composition.
Select your sequence and press command+opt+G (command+alt+G) to set the frame rate of your imported sequence. You can also set a default fps for sequences in the AE preferences, under Import.
Ben Unguren
Motion Graphics & Editing
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Im in AE on Win7 and I tried ctrl-alt-G and nothing worked. I did go to comp settings (ctrl k) to make sure it was at 15 fps.
I took a screenshot just to show you. Note the timeline on the bottom and see how there’s this discrepancy between the frames ending and the actual composition. I have tried to rectify this by entering in the number of frames (73 in this case) in the timecode duration, but it always converts it to a wrong time duration (around 00:00:03:01)so I end up manually entering in an end time approximately in sync with when the actual frame sequence ends.
An Artist interested in the past, stuck in the present.
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Can’t see the screenshot. Right-click on your footage and choose Interpret Footage–>Main… to set the framerate. (On older versions of AE, it was Ctrl+F, I believe…)
Ben Unguren
Motion Graphics & Editing
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hey ben, i am having a similar problem. when i import some mp4 footage, it just shows the very beginning frame. it says 0 to 0 below the preview. i cant move anything on the timeline. i prefer advice from you. thank you
“being 13 is a good time to start vfx”
-jonachan chainy
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