Weird Glitchy Area on my Footage

[Mary Van develde]

I’m so glad to have found this thread. I have noticed this problem in video I recently shot and realized it only began after I upgraded to Catalina. I’ll contact Apple Final Cut to find out if they can offer help.

[Jon Baum]

“I’m so glad to have found this thread. I have noticed this problem in video I recently shot and realized it only began after I upgraded to Catalina. I’ll contact Apple Final Cut to find out if they can offer help.” – Mary Van Develde

Mary – what was your camcorder make/model of the footage that you imported into FCP and observed the video glitches? It appears that Canon may be singled out as a source of the issue, for now.

In further testing with the Apple Pro Apps advisor, I’ve found that both Final Cut Pro X and iMovie, under Catalina, exhibit the same behavior with my Canon footage. The glitches are observed when playing back imported footage in the app(s) and if the footage is exported from FCP/iMovie or after being sent to Compressor.

Interestingly, the imported camera footage which resides in the Final Cut Pro Library which can be seen by right-clicking on the libray and “Show Package Contents” and drilling down to the original meda, when played outside of FCP (e.g., using QuickTime Player), does NOT show any glitches. So, there’s something about how FCP or iMovie use the video codecs to playback the footage. I suspect that both a FCP and Catalina update will be needed to fix this issue.

[Mary Van develde]

[Jon Baum] “Mary – what was your camcorder make/model of the footage that you imported into FCP and observed the video glitches? It appears that Canon may be singled out as a source of the issue, for now.
“

John,
My camera is a Canon XA10. I drilled down like you suggested and looked at the video in Quicktime and did not see the glitches there. I also looked at the video through my camera and I didn’t see disturbances. I shot video with my GoPro and my iPhone for this project, but the only video disturbances I see are when I edit the video shot on my Canon.

I used to be able to import video from this camera by just putting the SD card in my Thunderbolt Dock, but now when I do that I do not see it anywhere on my MacBook Pro. I don’t use Compressor.

I had some issues with importing to Final Cut right after I upgraded to Catalina in late October, but when I talked to Apple it looked like the issue might have been more related to my use of SD cards between cameras and not formatting them properly. This is really the first video I’ve imported and edited since then.

My background is more producing and writing. I’m doing more shooting and editing for personal projects now. I don’t have a deep technical knowledge of Final Cut, so I really appreciate help from knowelable people like you.

Thank you.

[Jon Baum]

Mary – thanks for the additional info, which corroborates my Canon camcorder experience.

As I mentioned prior in this thread, there is a workaround for importing the Canon footage, but it requires that you are able to mount the SD card as a “drive” on your Mac Desktop. I use a Satechi Aluminum USB-C Multiport Pro adapter (available via apple.com store) which has an SD card reader slot. Taking the SD card from the Canon camcorder and inserting into the reader slot allows the “drive” to be mounted. Don’t know why your Thunderbolt dock didn’t mount your card.

But if you can mount the card, visit https://www.divergentmedia.com/editready and download the Trial version of EditReady. You can drag the mounted SD card icon “drive” onto the EditReady app window which then reads the camcorder contents and is able to auto join all the contained *.mts video files and then convert to a “wrapped” MOV file which when then is imported into Final Cut Pro will NOT display any of the glitches seen with a direct import from the Canon camcorder. This is of course an interim solution/workaround.

Let’s hope that the Apple software engineers work out a permanent solution. Hope this helps you, Mary.

[Jon Baum]

I updated to MacOS Catalina 10.15.2 today on my MBP and repeated import into FCPX 10.4.7 from my Canon Vixia HF G10. Same visual artifacts seen during playback within the app. Playback from viewing the original media in the FCPX library outside of Final Cut show no glitches.

I then saw an update for Final Cut Pro to v10.4.8 and performed this update. The accompanying info stated “Prevents an issue that could lead to visual artifacts appearing onscreen for systems with Nvidia graphic cards that have Reduce Transparency accessibility preference enabled”.

I imported new Canon footage into FCPX 10.4.8 and observed the same artifacts as before (I have a Radeon Pro 560x card). So, I’m still hoping for a future fix – no word from Apple support from my last discussion with them.

[Mary Van develde]

Thanks for the info about the updates. I didn’t get any notifications about them, but found them and upgraded. I re-imported the video from may Canon XA10. I also still see the same artifacts. I tried the trial of EditReady and it did seem to fix the problem. The trial version only allows you to do clips of 1 minute and I don’t want to buy it. I haven’t had time to call Apple. I will try to do that tomorrow. Thanks for your info. This is very frustrating.

[Jon Baum]

Note that I’ve recently imported video into FCPX under Catalina from a Panasonic HC-VX1 camcorder, an older Sony camcorder, a GoPro 7 Black and a point-and-shoot Canon S110 camera and NONE of this footage imported displays any digital glitches. This currently still appears to be a CANON camcorder issue where I suspect the original reports at the beginning of this thread came from a variety of camcorder makes/models.

[Mary Van develde]

I just spoke to Apple Final Cut person and he basically said too bad. Says my camera is no longer supported by final cut. I had no issues until I upgraded to Catalina, but I can’t go back to the previous OS because when I upgraded my Time Machine backups were wiped out. Of course, they try to gaslight me. Saying I must have done something. I’m so fed up with Catalina and Apple.

[Mary Van develde]

[Jon Baum] “Jon Baum”
I pulled out old MacBook Pro which runs OS X El Capitan and Final Cut Pro X version 10.3.4.
I imported some of the clips with the video issues and I do not see any problems.
I’m afraid the Apple guy was correct and after the Catalina update my camera is no longer supported. Do you know of any other apps similar to EditReady I could try?

[Jon Baum]

Mary – If you’d like, contact me outside of this thread at JonB3@aol.com so I can give you more info directly. If there’s more to contribute to this thread, we can post later. Thanks – Jon