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VIDEO Clips Not Sitting on Frame Boundary (Subframe Video Issue)
Hi there,
I’ve been researching this issue like crazy but no results, so I’ve decided to post. Thank you in advance ☺
Specs: I’m working in the latest FCPX (10.3.2) and have found this issue persists in my FCPX library across both systems which are (1) iMac 5k 27″ late 2015, and (2) MacBook Pro Retina 15″ Early 2013 – my macs are running the latest OS Sierra (Version 10.12.4). The FCPX project settings are the same as the source video with a common frame rate of 23.98.
The Issue: Clips in primary and secondary storylines are sporadically not sitting on frame boundaries. This is causing a HUGE issue because video clips literally will not sit frame-to-frame and I’m getting flash frames (flash subframes) that I can’t cover because the video clip is still jumping forward and backward by single (1) frame increments, it’s just moving Point A (between frames 1 and 2) to Point B (between frames 2 and 3). I can’t force it to line up with and frame. It isn’t snapping to another clip above or below, and that’s the issue is that I WISH it would snap to a frame and line up with clips above and below ~ it isn’t! Here’s video of the issue: https://youtu.be/rmtYyLAO1_w In the video, you can see how the playhead is moving from one frame to the next and the video clip top and tails are not lining up with either frame, they are sitting between frames. When I try to overwrite the clip to primary storyline, it either pushes the video to the left side of the clip below it (instead of overwriting) or it overwrites but adds space for the subframe as gap clip, which I can delete but still doesn’t solve the issue.
Question: This issue (above) has to be a bug, right? Or is there something I’m missing here? I’m aware that video by nature cannot be cut on subframes even though audio can, so I have no clue why this is happening. I’ve trashed preferences and copied the project to a new library. The issue remains. I found a post on another site from someone who seems to be describing this same issue, but unresolved: https://www.fcp.co/forum/4-final-cut-pro-x-fcpx/26931-snap-problem-between-clips-fcpx-10-3-2
Any advice or further inquiries are greatly appreciated. Thanks!
– Ellen
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8 Replies
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Your YouTube link is broken.
Noah
FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
FCP Exchange – FCPX Workshops
XinTwo – FCPX Training -
Thank you, Noah. Here are the links from my post:
YouTube Video example of the issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmtYyLAO1_w
Article with someone else experiencing this issue as well and describing it: https://www.fcp.co/forum/4-final-cut-pro-x-fcpx/26931-snap-problem-between-clips-fcpx-10-3-2
Thank you,
Ellen -
I’ve seen this on just one of my projects, which was initially done by another editor in FCP7. We needed most of the timeline integrated into a new piece so I decided to bring it over to FCPX.
I opened the old project, exported XML, translated with SendToX, and imported. It’s a 23.98 timeline and many of the clips (including stills) have this sub-frame issue. Because of the tight turnaround, I didn’t have time to troubleshoot. The issue manifests itself seemingly randomly with about 30% of edits. Ended up simply overlapping with connected clips to cover the half/quarter/eighth/sixteenth frames.
I was able to fix a couple of instances just now by selecting a problem clip and modifying the timing – selected 100% speed, then Automatic Speed (this locked it into correct full frame timing). When I tried it on another clip from the same shoot and camera, the Automatic Speed setting changed the clip speed to 250%! It’s a talking head on green screen, shot at 23.98.
I’ve only experienced the problem on this particular project, and have a little time to poke at it, so will see if there are more clues.
Doug Metz
Anode
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Hey Doug,
Thanks so much for sharing your experience and giving some insight. Yes, I’m curious if there are others out there who have experienced this and found a quick way to clean it up and a reason why it’s happening in the first place… Thank you for taking the time to contribute to this post ☺
Anyone else have some insight? It also causes an issue when attempting to overwrite to the primary storyline with the keyboard shortcut or using the position tool… It pushes content on the primary storyline left and right in strange ways and won’t overwrite the material. See screencap example of this here: https://youtu.be/klrsyZdNrgs?t=38s
– Ellen
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Hard to tell without seeing the viewer but I would suggest starting a new Library/Project timeline set to the correct timebase. Then select all in the original TL and copy/paste into the new one. And see if the problem persists.
Noah
FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
FCP Exchange – FCPX Workshops
XinTwo – FCPX Training -
[Noah Kadner] “I would suggest starting a new Library/Project timeline set to the correct timebase. Then select all in the original TL and copy/paste into the new one. And see if the problem persists.
“Noah, you magnificent bastard!
Should have tried this first (and I know better). This worked every way I tried it – new Lib/Event/Project, new Event/Project in the original library, and even just a new Project in the original Event.
Select All, Copy, Paste into new project. All good.
Hope it works for Ellen…
Doug Metz
Anode
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Or Inglorious Bastard, either works. ????
Noah
FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
FCP Exchange – FCPX Workshops
XinTwo – FCPX Training -
Hey Doug and Noah,
Thanks so much for helping me out on this! Yes, copying and pasting to a new project worked. I used custom settings to set up the fresh project at 23.98 instead of automatic settings based on first clip, just to be safe. The project settings of the “issue project” in question were correctly at 23.98, but I still thought I’d just go clean slate on the new project just in case some clip in my project had been throwing things off.
I’ve definitely seen a similar issue now that I think of it when I worked as an AE with the legacy final cut 6 and 7. We’d sometimes have to export an XML of a 23.98 timeline and import to force conform it to a 29.97 timeline — the new 29.97 timeline (now filled with the cut from the 23.98 timeline) would have some extra frames of black and nudged audio, which we’d have to smooth out and fill in where needed. So this felt like a similar result: the new project I created and pasted my cut into got all the video tops and tails to line up at full frame points (and not between frames ~ hallelujah! ), but it did create a few frames of gap clip on the primary storyline and nudged my secondary storyline video and connected audio clips forward and backward by 3-5 frames at random.
So even thought the “issue project” in question said it was at 23.98, either it was off or some clips in there were causing an issue. I had a mixture of 23.98, 119.88, and 24fps footage in the timeline with a mixture of codecs (animation, h264, and MXF). I had to give it a thorough QC and nudge things around to get them back in place, but all in all now I have a clean timeline to work with. PHEW!
Thank you guys,
Ellen
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