-
newbie help
hey folks,
I posted this last week in the main forum, and got the following reply.
looking for a little newbie help here. i’m new to non-linear systems, not film and video in general. But some of the technical issues of importing/format etc, are beyond me at this point.
I just did a shoot for a college i’m working for, in studio, pretty straight forward. We used two cameras (so i’ve have something to cut away to, mostly), and since our panasonic p2 was out for repairs, i had to use the 2 new sony sr11’s we keep for more informal use.
I did a lot of work to make sure i had an ok workflow to import the footage into fcp (we use g4’s in the office, so i’m using my macbook for the actual import, saving to harddisk, then transferring to the edit suite computers).
The footage from the camera i use most of the time looks great. I wanted that cinematic look, so we used HD. But the camera the other guy ran, which has the main shot, is stretched and distorted when imported through “log and transfer” in fcp.
so what did i do wrong? clearly i got a setting wrong somewhere, though i didn’t actually change anything. i guess i shot one in hd and the other in sd? but why is one 16:9 and the other full screen? seems like you’d actually have to make an effort to get that. I ran test footage and it didn’t appear that way. arg!! frustating!
and how do i most easily fix the footage? the image didn’t look wrong in the camera viewfinder (i verified this with the cameraman), or in the fcp log and transfer window. only when i open it up in the viewer.
thanks for any help you can give this simpleton.
jb
here’s the reply i got:
You should have used Final Cut Pro > Easy Setup prior to capturing/transcoding footage. That is the bullet proof way of dealing with different formats.
Just re-import the footage with the proper setting.
Please, since you are new, post questions like this in the FCP Basics forum. No offense, but we try to keep the basic questions over there to keep the noise down in this forum. The advice there is just as good as this forum, it’s just for more basic questions.
Thanks.
Kevin Monahan
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut ProI know this is simple stuff, but re-import with what “proper setting”? I’m pretty sure it’s in “easy setup” now. but i’ll check when i get final cut fired up.
I’m out of town now, but have emailed asking someone to check the camera settings for me, so i can tell what i’m dealing with. I’m pretty sure this was the first shoot ever with the main camera, so the settings would be straight out of the box.
-
4 Replies
-
Jana,
There are far too many settings on both the camera and in FCP for us to guess which ones were perhaps set improperly. And, just looking at the footage yourself may not tell you enough either. You need to learn to inspect the Quicktime files in either Quicktime Player or in the Final Cut Pro browser to see precisely what type of Quicktimes were imported, the information is written right there in the QT file.
If you open a QT file in QT Player and click on Open Movie Inspector in the Window menu, you will see a page that will tell you exactly what codec was captured and exactly what the pixel dimensions are. That same information is listed in the FCP Browser for every QT clip captured, if you just scroll over to the right. It’ll be pretty easy to figure out what the difference is between the files once you examine that information.
Make sense???
David
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
-
yes, thanks, david, that makes sense.
I had looked at the info in the browser and found that the pixels of one set of files was shown as “square” and the other as HD (1440 x 1080). i understand the difference, square vs. rectangular pixels, which accounts for why the image on one set looks stretched and not on the other. i just don’t know how to compensate for it, or really how i managed to do this.
in the quicktime inspectoro of one set, it says ProRes 422, 1980 x1080. normal size 2560 x 1080, actual size 2560 x 1080, square. does that accounts for the “cinematic” look? widescreen, i guess
The other set says Apple ProRes 422 as well, HD 1440x 1080. this is the set that open full screen, no cinematic effect.
the sony sr11 shoots AVCHD files, and the format of the file itself is .mts, if that’s relevant info.
I’m happy to re-transfer any and all of these files. I just get overwhelmed when i open the drop down menu and find 50 different listings, non of which seem to match the sony camera i used.
thanks for helping.
jana b.
I really
-
[Jana Birchum] “in the quicktime inspectoro of one set, it says ProRes 422, 1980 x1080. normal size 2560 x 1080, actual size 2560 x 1080”
Jana,
This is clearly a problem. 2560 x 1080 does not represent any HD format. Your codec is most likely anamorphic 1440×1080, which diplays 1920×1080 when unsqueeezed.
Please explain to me how you captured to ProRes? Was it vioa firewire or through a capture card?
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
-
ok, well maybe that’s where the problem lies.
I had to leave town IMMEDIATELY after the shoot, so i copied the ACHVD files directly to an portable firewire drive, and did the log and transfer later. I transferred both sets of files in the same way. The material that comes up as 2560 x 1080 is from the camera i’ve used fairly extensively before. The other is a new camera that has only been used to test to make sure it was working, nothing more.
I ran tests on the camera that’s coming up 2560 just to test the lights, and nothing unusual came up. I used a LOT of footage from it in a previous project, no problems.
this is really beyond me and i sooo appreciate your help.
jana b.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up