Jittery video in Final Cut Pro, but random in playback, etc

[Jerry Hofmann]

How was the DV shot? 24fps? or? how did you capture it? Might try capturing it thru the Kona… What are you using as a scratch disk?

You need to be running 5.0.4 on QT 7.1.6 and OS 10.4.8 or 9 too BTW…

Jerry

Apple Certified Trainer

Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here

Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D

[Robbert-jan Van der does]

Hi Greg,

From what you describe it seems to me that you might have the Field Order wrong. Try to apply a “Shift Fields” filter (Effects>Video Filters>Video>Shift Fields).
Are you in a PAL or a NTSC country?
When you are in NTSC the Field Order for both Uncompressed sequences and DV sequences is Lower Field first (Even Fields). In PAL however, the the correct Field Order for Uncompressed is Upper Field first (Odd Fields) and for DV it is Lower Field.
You also might want to check the encoding settings in Compressor and /or DVD Studio Pro.

Hope this helps for you.

Regards,
Robbert-Jan

[Steve Connor]

Try telling us what all your settings are to start with!

Also are you using an external video monitor and is the footage stuttering on that? How full is your hard disk, that could be an issue. Can you run the Kona Speed test on it to see what speed it’s running at?

There are NO known issues like this so you are either doing something wrong or you have a hardware problem. The more information you can pos, the more people will be able to help.

[Doubleheader]

Here is a bit more info.
I am shooting with a Sony VX2000, with external Mic and using Firewire to capture into FCP. Originally I had the mic setting wrong at 12 bit, and when I would capture I always got a message stating some frames might be dropped etc. So, once I figured out that issue, and was setting my camera to 16bit(48k)I did not get any error message with the audio. Now I have footage shot with the old setting of 12 bit, and found in the FCP the setting to alter the input to 32k and have set up an easy set-up for that issue. That all aside the video is still quirky on some shots.
As for the video shift fields I tried that as well, with no luck.
The field dominance is going into the capture as Lower field dominance and as you say, and I read in the manual DV footage should be Lower field. I even switched the sequence from Drop Frame to unchecking that box and no difference really.
We just emptied out about 200 gigs of footage out of the HD, so there is over 300 gig available. We have tried to keep raw footage out of the Mac HD for the most part. So the scratch disk is the G-Raid. From Memory we use Capture and sequence Apple Firewire DV 48k,
Firewire device, and built in audio for playback. We are using a 23 inch wide screen Apple monitor we bought with the new system from apple in Aug 2005.
The original footage plays from the camera with RCA outputs to my NTSC TV in the living room perfectly. It is not wide screen video, as I purposely shot it at 4:3 since I knew my second camera person had an older system without widescreen. This seems to matter not in the jitter issue anyway, as I shot some widescreen and it burbs horribly as well.
Yes this sounds like a settings problem, but I have not been able to conclude which preference or system settings we are getting wrong, unless it is a hardware issue. Thanks for the help. Its appreciated.
Computers can be frustrating. I own several Macs, and like them, but have the internet on this HP so the internet is not connected to the editing bay.
As a positive note, I can say this FCP can do one heck of a lot for the money. Way more than my early AVID MCxpress could do, which cost me $13K just for the video card!!! Now it sits cause it would have cost more to upgrade than buy a new system. With that I could not even do picture in picture cause I didn’t want to spend the $5K to get the REAL-TIME effects, and without it the P in P was worthless.
With FCP I can do some nice things to put 2 or 3 images in one frame for an open or something like that. I don’t believe in over-eating too many special effects. Give me a good dissolve and I am happy!! Let the action speak for itself, but not with jitters!! 🙂
Greg Scholl
https://www.gregschollvideo.com

PS Anyone remember tube cameras??? I know I am old 🙂

[Steve Connor]

Have you tried sending a jittery sequence back to tape and playing that on your TV?

Steve Connor
Adrenalin Television

Have you tried “Search Posts”? Enlightenment may be there.

[Doubleheader]

Not exactly what you suggested but similar.
I have made an entire DVD program, and played that on my regular TV with a different DVD player, and it looks the same as it did in FCP etc. Still has the same jittery scenes…Not all are bad, just now and then. In that case I tried editing around stuff, but in some cases had to allow some or lose an entire scene.
Also I have done 1 minute preview segments and captured them back on my VX2000 to save for future use. Just for kicks the last two I made, I decided to try to capture those previews(1 minute trailers), back via firewire, and they worked just fine, but then there were no jittery shots there.
Another issue is weird specs or glitches now and then. My friend says they may be audio glitches as the audio is a little hot going in, but I lower it in the timeline. There seems to be no way to control audio level when capturing. This may or may not be the issue.
Last 20 or so tests on the same scene has no glitches, just the jittery video each time.
I also had some mini-dv footage from film transfer I got, and it got a glitch or two when captured. If you recapture it might be fine.
Whats up with that one!!! This glitch is like a little hit where its one frame, and there is a tick in the audio when you see the 4-5 specs on the screen! But that may be unrelated, so maybe I should not muddy the waters here.
I am working on another project that was captured from Betacam, until I can resolve this Firewire issue. I have put this off far too long, and now have to pay the piper and deal with it somehow! Thanks so far for your assistance.
I do have one other question. When I capture footage in the captured project line, it says the captured footage is lower field dominance. That relates the to footage that has just been brought in.
Now, is there a place in the playback, or sequence settings that should also say LOWER!!! How would you regulate this if you wanted to. Seems to me I found this setting for compressor once, but in FCP we are not even ready for Compressor yet!!!
Greg

[Doubleheader]

Jerry, We have downloaded the FCP version you mentioned(5.0.4, as we now have 5.0.2. We will also download the QT, etc you recommend. We have to do this the hard way on an HP dial-up, onto disk and then move to the Editing station to download.
Question….can this FCP version be downloaded without affecting programs that are already on the old version? Or, would I be better off finishing a current project and getting it out of the system before the download. We could download the FCP new version today, but don’t want to lose the stuff I have in there now(mostly stored on G-Raid).
Thanks,
Greg

[Doubleheader]

Yesterday we took the G5 and monitor apart and took it to my brothers place, and long story short we updated all the latest versions of FCP and 11 other things on the computer. We now are runing 5.0.4, etc.
This solved nothing. We tried capturing footage on the same tape and the same scene using 24 FPS and other things to see if it would work.
No luck. I played back the footage via RCA cables into a regular NTSC tv and it played very nicely and smooth. So am at my wits end on this issue. I can always copy to Betacam SP then capture with Kona LS, and that will work, but it renders my firewire useless somewhat doesn’t it. Don;t get me wrong not all clips are bad, but it might be 20% of them and you don’t know until you playback to watch them. I suppose I could capture problematic clips on Betacam SP and capture just those, which may be my way around it, but would like to solve the issue just for the sake of knowing.
Could someone give me a list of what settings I should be using for NTSC Firewire capture, and see if I am missing something. Preferences, system settings, and audio.video settings.
Thanks,
Greg