Streamclip (AIC codec) import into FCP 6 ripples

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Naomi,
What kind of footage are you working with and which will be your delivery format?
Rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Naomi Stock]

I guess I’m confused with your question. I thought the details in my post describes the footage I’m working with. Unless I needed to say .mov’s? Sorry, I thought all QT exports became .mov’s. As far as what I want to export them as…I’m not there yet. I’m struggling wtih IMPORTING into FCP 6. If you need to know that in order to answer my question…well…I’d like to keep the highest quality – without distorting anything – then burn onto a DVD for TV viewing. Thank you kindly!

[David Roth weiss]

[Rafael Amador] “What kind of footage are you working with”

It’s obviously “Stock” footage Rafael, just look at Naomi’s last name.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

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

[David Roth weiss]

[Naomi Stock] “I guess I’m confused with your question. I thought the details in my post describes the footage I’m working with”

Naomi,

It’s nice that you tried to provide all the details in your initial post, however, this is a business of precision, and so Rafael was asking you for clarity, because typically ripping from DVDs is quite straight forward, and he’s most likely wondering what’s so different that’s causing you to struggle.

[Naomi Stock] “I’d like to keep the highest quality – without distorting anything”

Of course, no one ever asks for a solution that delivers the lowest quality with distortion.

First, DVDs are encoded at a very high compression rate often approaching 25 to 1 or more, so you’re never going to recreate high resolution video no matter what codec you transcode to. Also, AIC is a legacy codec, only still in FCP as a courtesy to those who may have older projects captured to it years ago. It has been replaced by the vastly superior ProRes codec.

In this case, the DV codec is in fact just fine for the video portions of a DVD, however if there are graphics or text you need form the DVD, or if you will add graphics or text in FCP, then DV50 will be better, so that the graphics and/or text are not hammered by additional DV compression.

As far as the distortion goes, if it’s a widescreen DVD, then you’ll need to either rip as anamorphic or check the anamorphic box in the FCP browser.

And finally, for all intents and purposes, you should forget about deinterlacing — just because there are buttons or controls does not mean you have to use them…

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

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

[Naomi Stock]

Hey David. Nice to hear from you. After reading some of your posts I chose to sign up on this website. I appreciate your response. Although, I seem to be getting comments about ripping from a DVD (never did), pushing random buttons (I said why I chose to deinterlace). So, what I thought was clear must not be. So, let me change my approach and see if anyone out there can steer me onto the right path.

1. Was choosing AIC as my Compression while exporting MPG’s thru Streamclip a mistake – for someone who wants to import the footage into FCP?
a.) If yes, why?
b.) If yes, is that the reason I get a vibrating rippling line which travels up the video image every few seconds while playing once imported into FCP? (the footage is fine when played in QT)
a.)If yes, what should I do about it? (re-export choosing the popular DVCPro NTSC Compression thru QTpro?)
b.)If no, what is the reason and how can I make it stop?

My thoughts: Due to the alert messages which appear in FCP once I import the footage (posted in my original post) I feel there is just something I need to select in FCP preferences/user settings/etc. and it will play the video footage without the ripple. Then I can finally start editing.

I have 650 clips – all QT .mov’s:

Video Tracks:
Apple Intermediate Codec, 854 × 480, 29.97 fps, 12.36 Mbps

Audio Tracks:
16-bit Big Endian stereo, 48 kHz

[Tom Wolsky]

This is completely wrong.

You need to convert to DV NTSC 720×480 at 29.97.

If the material is really widescreen, set the anamorphic flag in FCP. Work in an anamorphic DV sequence.

All the best,

Tom

Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP6,” “Basic Training for FCS2” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop”

[Naomi Stock]

Thank you for your direct response Tom. I will follow your guidance.

Cheers!

[David Roth weiss]

[Naomi Stock] “After reading some of your posts I chose to sign up on this website.”

Thanks, and sorry i misread your original post above. I saw Streamclip and just assumed it was about ripping from a DVD.

[Naomi Stock] “1. Was choosing AIC as my Compression while exporting MPG’s thru Streamclip a mistake – for someone who wants to import the footage into FCP? “

Yes. And as Tom mentioned 720×480 is the proper pixel dimension, don’t know how you arrived at854 × 480. DV is good, or DV50 a tad better due to it’s 4:2:2 color space. As I mentioned before, AIC is a legacy codec, it is rather lossy and it has been greatly improved with ProRes.

[Naomi Stock]“is that the reason I get a vibrating rippling line which travels up the video image every few seconds while playing once imported into FCP? (the footage is fine when played in QT) “

I suspect that may be an artifact caused by improper scaling, as it seems you have somehow ended-up with those odd pixel dimensions.

Hope this helps…

David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

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

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Naomy,
I missed that too.
I guess your camera have a native size 854 x 480. This in square pixels is prefect 16 x 9.
Just convert to 720 x 480.
You can use the Clip Info function in MPEGStreamclip to know the field order of your MPPEG-2 clips.
Export with the same field-order and treat the interlacing in FC if needed.
The best codec for exporting would be 8b Unc. Huge files.
You can give a try too DV50.
Go to a 10b codec is for nothing.
When you import the clips to FC you must check them as Anamorphic.
Your 854 x 480 look 16 x 9 in QT because is made of square pixels.
QT display the NTSC Anamorphic pixels of the 720 x 480.mov as Square pixels too. This is why the movie looks distorted in QT. That’s normal.
Rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Andy Mees]

[Naomi Stock] “Here’s the scoop.”
Heee. A valiant attempt and kudos for at least appreciating the need and going for it …. unfortunately what we ended up with was “a” scoop, not “the” scoop!

For future reference (though hopefully it won’t be necessary) heres some of the kind of questions immediately thrown up:

Downloaded MPG’s from video camera.
OK, first obvious question is “What camera” … by giving the specific camera make and model then folks can get a good idea of which source formats you might be dealing with. “MPG’s” come in many flavors …. your post doesn’t detail what the actual source format is nor its resolution or bit rate. Similarly, although your post does specifically note that you are making “6 short films” “for TV playback” its not really quite clear whether you are intending to author and distribute your films on DVD’s for personal or mass consumption or whether the project is to be delivered for broadcast. All these are exactly the kind of details that are really needed in order to offer you good, targeted advice on how to get the best from your footage, and this is basically what Rafael asked for in his first response “What kind of footage are you working with and which will be your delivery format? ”

Streamclip – export to QT. Wanting to keep highest quality…
Details follow on what you then did to the mystery footage which is great but it all essentially concludes that it didn’t work. We know you tested DVCPRO NTSC amongst 10 other formats and that amongst them you liked AIC’s color rendition best, but we don’t know what those other formats that you tested actually were, and so can’t advise on whether they were appropriate for your unknown source or target, nor do we know how you judged the results (on a TV, on your computer monitor, whether you have any I/O hardware etc) and we don’t really know the criteria of your assessments. We do know you spent 4 hrs testing the various formats and so clearly it wasn’t just a pot luck decision but other than the the fact that the setting you hit upon ultimately didn’t work (can you say “media not optimized” and ‘”ripples”?) we really don’t know how you arrived at those settings.

Regarding your questions then:

1. Was choosing AIC as my Compression while exporting MPG’s thru Streamclip a mistake – for someone who wants to import the footage into FCP?

No, it was not a mistake in and of itself, but it may not have been your best option. However, without knowing all the details (noted as missing above) and without knowing the details of your edit system hardware (Mac, RAM, Storage, I/O etc) then it is guesswork as to what would be the most suitable choice for you.

….

b.)If no, what is the reason and how can I make it stop?

Well the reason is guesswork too without the missing info.

For better or for worse Naomi, if you do come back and check this thread then hopefully this will be helpful. If not, then I guess some other luckless poster might stumble across it somewhere down the line, in which case hopefully it might help them 🙂

Best
Andy