smoothcam export solution nowhere to be found! help!!

[David Bogie]

[Jack King] “its 5d footage, being output at h.264 – 29.97 fps etc etc – and everything works fine bar the smoothcam footage that is all shaky! Its fine in the timeline!”

This workflow sounds bad to me but I’m not watching you work and you may have omitted several steps in your haste to demand a solution. The Canon footage has to be converted to an editing format, a step you may or may not have performed, and that rendered or transcoded media file should be able to execute a perfectly useful Smoothcam render. How did you apply Smoothcam? Have you forced that clip to render as self-contained? Why do you want h.264? How are you creating your h.264 output? From what application? Have you exported the entire sequence as a self-contained movie first or are you attempting to do the export from the timeline? There are no correct or incorrect answers. They depend upon your machine, your experience, and your ability to understand how Optical Flow works.

You’re going to need a big dose of patience this weekend since only those of us who have no lives are hanging out on the cow.

bogiesan

[Gabriele Sartori]

It is just the way FCP 7 is. I got the same issue and it was totally unexpected because even imovie is capable to apply the smoothcam filter on H264 material. I spent an entire day trying to figure out what was wrong. For some obscure reason FCP 7 doesn’t like to apply SC on certain formats. You have to convert the clip into another format re-import and it will work.

Gabriele – California

[Jack King]

hi guys, thanks so much for your help here, especially this weekend your right david, i hadn’t expected any help, but that doesn’t make it any easier for me to forget that only yesterday i thought i was done with this god forsaken project – now its eating into my xmas. If i was spending today with my GF i think she’d have murdered me by now, i can see myself having no life in the future.

gabriele – thank you so much but which format works? this is 5d footage (1920 x 1080) so it needs to be pro res does it not? is it just pro res the smooth cam doesn’t like to export?

david – i am working with pro res LT, and trying to output into high quality for the internet. I’ve been advised that h.264 is best for doing this, but i am by no means an expert.

i’ve tried doing both from the timeline and as a stand alone movie. neither work. i really hope i don’t need to know about the things you mentioned in order to sort this, i heard this is just a bug and apple are responsible – the smoothcam is simple drag and drop, this must be an export issue as i have no trouble editing in the timeline or playing back. i’ve never known anything like it.

Thanks guys, and gabriele – if you could let me know of which format might work then i would be forever grateful. It may be that this won’t have to eat up my boxing day too! Just to re-iterate, i have no problem APPLYING the smooth cam, it is only when exported i experience the problem.

cheers guys, Jack

[Gabriele Sartori]

[Jack King] ”
gabriele – thank you so much but which format works? this is 5d footage (1920 x 1080) so it needs to be pro res does it not? is it just pro res the smooth cam doesn’t like to export?”

Many formats works. I have two cameras, a Canon HDV camera and a tiny Sanyo H264 camera. When I use the Sanyo I now transcode the material (it is done very quickly) using mpeg streamclip. Most of us have this free SW, if you don’t have just DL it here:
https://www.squared5.com/
As ouput format it depends on my project. If I mix and match with HDV material that wasn’t transcoded I use Apple HDV as ouput. If it is a rare sanyo only piece I use prores LT. I use LT since I think that it would be an overkill to use more BW for the little sanyo. In both cases it works perfectly, the quality is great, I don’t see degradation and smoothcam works great. With mpeg streamclip you can do batch transcoding. I lanch my 20-30 clips and I go to watch some TV when I come back it is done. Sometime the material is on my macbook pro, I just transcode it right there and then transfer to my bigger machine. In my experience just pay attention at the frame rate. If you have a different transfer rate and want to transcode to 30P or 24P just make sure that you input the correct frame rate i.e. 23.976
For the 5D another step is to use Cineform Neoscene. I bought it and it does a pretty good 60i to 24P conversion. Unfortunately I can do a CF422 conversion very well but for some strange reason I can’t make a prores conversion (although I can use CF422 in my timeline). I tested in two macs, same thing. Now CF is helping me trying to see what is the issue, they were able to transcode one of my clips in their labs.
Finally, I’m surprise by the quality of the mpeg streamclip conversion including 24P conversion. It could be though that my TV is a factor. It is a great TV but it is 2-3 years old and it probably has some latency in the response creating a motion blur that make visualisation easier to the eyes. Neoscene has some bleding technique that make the 24P the best possible considering the low frame rate.

Regards
Gabriele

Gabriele – California

[Jack King]

hi gabrielle –

thanks alot for the info. I’m still a little confused however. Are you using FCP 7? Have you experienced this particular problem??? I have absolutely no problems with converting any material -all my 5d footage runs fine as prores LT, but my specific problem is merely with the exporting of those very few clips that have the smoothcam plug in applied to them.

I’m not an experienced editor so a lot of your information is hard for me to digest. I only need to know which format I could convert these few shaky clips to in order to be able to use smoothcam and export without the shake returning! Or even whether or not this is actually possible!

Jack 🙂

[Aaron Tharpe]

Jack,
I’m experiencing the same problem right now and trying to find a resolution. I’m working with 5D footage that has been converted to Apple Pro Res in FCP7. When i apply smoothcam, it looks great in the timeline, but the exported footage is COMPLETELY jacked up. It almost looks like it alters the framerate of the footage it’s on. it’s incredibly jumpy and awkward looking. Never had this problem before FCP7. I’m going to attempt to drop a deinterlace filter on the footage, but i doubt that’s the solution….

NEED HELP!!! There’s gotta be an answer out there….

[Jaco Banchini]

I’ve found the solution: I’ve been editing with HDV material 1080i50 and when I saw the timeline everything was right but as I exported the clips they was at the staring point without smoothcam. So: I need progressive material because I’m from Europe, Italy, so I de-interlaced everyclip, first – exported them and re-imported (smoothcam is not able to smooth clips and de-interlace at the same time). Second: I’ve opened a new sequence and set the field like dominance “NONE”; third I’ve applied the smoothcam – renderized – exported as QTmovie HDV 1080i50: perfect.

Pretty long but it works.

Seems that you have to export the clips in a sequence with none field dominance…

bye bye!!

[Jaco Banchini]

I forgot to tell the last thing, the only way to trick SMOOTHCAM!!
If you need various clips to be “Smoothcamized”, as you put them on a new sequence with field dominance “NONE”, keep them all together, apply smoothcam on each and export a unique one VIDEO clip. Why this? It seems that previous exports were conditioned by the files .mtdf that Smoothcam creates after every stabilization remebering the history of each clip… In this way Smoothcam forgets the origin and Final cut consider them to be as a totally different clip.
Seems to work.

GOOD LUCK!

[Rafael Amador]

The issues with the HDV and H264 may be due to the GOP structure (iMovie converts everything to Intraframe – DV Sequence or AIC- before processing), but if this happens with Prores, IMO is there is a problem with FC.
Interlacing shouldn’t be an issue. SC works pretty well with Interlaced stuff.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Matt Gibbs]

Hi

I’m currently having the same problem and it’s driving me mad. I’m a bit unfamiliar with the software, is there any chance you can break it down step-by-step for me?

I would really appreciate it.

Thanks

Matt