Bill Lee
Forum Replies Created
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So, do a quick test.
Set in and out points on the sequence to encode about ten seconds worth. Export your short sequence as a reference movie and drag that into Compressor and encode that. Does that encode? If so, reset your In/Out points to a longer clip of that sequence and try again.
How much rendering have you done? Try using the Render Manager
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I started to reply to your question about where did the QuickTimeMPEG2.component (i.e. MPEG-2 Playback Component) come from, but things got in the way. If you want to know if it’s installed, check /System/Libray/QuickTime for the bundle called ‘QuickTimeMPEG2.component’, or look in your /Libray/Receipts for ‘QuickTimeMPEG2Pro.pkg’ which appears to have been created/modified in 2003 and May 2006 respectively. I’m running FCP 5.1.2, DVD Studio Pro 4.0.3 so if you aren’t running this you may find different modification times. In trying to work out when the MPEG-2 playback component was installed, I spent some time trying to work out which software package installed it, and eventually gave up because my FCP is an 4.x with 5.0 installed over the top of it, with further updates to 5.1.2. It also has a lot of third party software such as EyeTV, VLC, ProjectX, DIVX Pro, MPEG Streamclip, Toast which can all read and display MPEG-2 files to some extent.
Part of the instructions on how to fully remove FCP 4.x includes instruction to remove the QuickTimeMPEG2.component, so it is almost certainly installed as part of FCP4/DVDSP3.
If you haven’t yet downloaded MPEG Streamclip, do so just to read the MPEG Streamclip Guide for it, even if you never use it to encode something (It even has a menu item that will allow you to print out this guide). This guide will give some of the best practical information on Elemental, Program and Transport streams in MPEG-2. The bottom line is that not all streams will play back in the QuickTime Player even with the MPEG-2 Playback Component, and Transport streams seem to be one such example. The .m2t plays back on both MPEG Streamclip and in VLC, but not in QuickTime Player nor EyeTV v2.x.
The MPEG Streamclip Guide says on the first page: ‘To play and export MPEG-2 files, you have to install Apple’s MPEG-2 Playback Component. If you have either Final Cut Pro 4/5 or DVD Studio Pro, the MPEG-2 Playback Component is already installed. Otherwise, you can purchase it online from Apple. QuickTime Pro is not required.’ Later on it says: ‘CONVERTING THE STREAM
The following commands are available only if the source stream is in MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 format; they do not require
the Apple MPEG-2 Playback Component.’, and then goes on to list the convert to Program and Transport stream options, so it looks like you might be able to multiplex and demultiplex without the MPEG-2 Playback Component. Might.Like I said before, what you need to do will depend on the MPEG-2 playback device you need to feed this MPEG-2 stream to, and there are a lot of varieties of MPEG-2 around as you have now discovered. There is no One And True MPEG-2 with a .mpg filename suffix, but a range of MPEG-2 types with differing formats and encodings. Try taking a short ten second clip and digitising it as MPEG-2 program stream with ac3 audio, MPEG-2 program stream with MP2 audio, MPEG-2 transport stream with MP2 audio. See if the playback device plays back variations of MPEG-2 such as generated by Topfield or Humax PVRs. Take the sample file you have for that device and open it in MPEG Streamclip and examine it with the ‘Show Stream Info’ to get some idea of what you need to generate.
Bill Lee
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Gosh-darn, you are absolutely right there Tom. Hadn’t looked at the standard MPEG-2 setting for so long.
If you just need a MPEG-2 Transport stream then I’d go with Tom’s solution, but you may still need MPEG Streamclip if you need to create Program streams or have Dolby Digital (.ac3) audio multiplexed in your Transport/Program stream. It all comes down to what the device that is supposed to be playing back this MPEG-2 requires, and also what format you have already.
Bill Lee
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MPEG Streamclip v1.7
http://www.squared5.com
If you don’t have FCP, FCS, DVD Studio Pro, or the MPEG-2 Playback Component installed on your Mac, then you won’t be able to do the conversion with MPEG Streamclip. For some reason best known to Apple, probably licensing fees, this MPEG-2 codec is not included as a standard QuickTime codec.1) Open the MPEG Streamclip application
2) File>Open Files -
You shouldn’t be worried about the color drift, since you won’t be basing color timing decisions from the computer monitor anyway. You should have a broadcast monitor that you are feeding the Canvas to if at all possible, since the progressive nature of your computer display is not going to match your source material (unless you are working in 720p or other progressive media).
Even a cheap second (computer) monitor can be useful to put your Bin (Browser) on while you are working on the other widescreen monitor. You generally won’t be doing a whole lot of work on this window compared the the need to have lots of screen space for Viewer, Timeline and Canvas. The second monitor doesn’t have to match the main monitor, and thus can be low cost (i.e cheap). If you are using CRT displays, having two monitors close together can create visible instability as the magnetic fields interfere with each others electron beams – two LCDs won’t have this problem.
You should also set up some alternative window setups that you can switch at a combination keystroke, so that you can quickly switch to the optimal layout for that moment.
Bill Lee
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It is easy – Steven is giving the right answer.
Here’s the sequence for doing it (assuming you are not using F10 for Expos
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[GenDelmarva] “lines that were straight (door james, door steps) become slightly wavy”
This is because your original material is 60 fields per second (50 in PAL) rather than the 24 complete frames that film would have. If you examine the original video on a progressive monitor and pause the video, you will notice a comb effect on the left and right edges of objects in the times when you are panning. This is because you are seeing two halves of an image separated in time by 1/60th of a second (1/50 in PAL). Moves such as pans will have one half of an image moved in respect to the other, creating this comb effect on the left and right edges of object that are appearing to move. When you take that video and resize it in a sequence, the alternate lines showing half of a image separated by time now no longer fall into their correct field lines and spill over into the other field’s scanlines and thus you will get some of a field that should be played later are now being played earlier and vice versa. When you see it on the Canvas, the round-off in calculations will show the comb appearing as a castellated (wavy) line on vertical lines in a pan – this is one reason why you shouldn’t rely on the Canvas view on a progressive monitor (e.g. computer monitor) to make decisions on interlaced (i.e. normal) video.
Film wouldn’t have these issues as the frame contains the information from a snapshot in time, and thus won’t have the issues of one field coming from a different time and thus a changed view – although this won’t hold if you are using telecined file to video. 24fps Film (or progressive video) can therefore be scaled without running into these issues.
To avoid this, you can apply a deinterlace filter to the video to reduce the effects of these scaled alternate fields appearing in the other field. The down side is the loss of sharpness caused by this deinterlace filter. No free lunches.
Bill Lee
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[mortimer heathcliff] “does anyone have an idea how or why this might have happened? just something getting corrupted? any way to prevent this in the future?”
No Idea Why. Just happens occasionally. The best way to deal with this is to ensure you can survive a corrupted project or preferences by prior planning and preparation:
Preferences:
1) FCP Rescue: haven’t used it myself, but reports from people say it’s good. Will back up preferences (before they go bad) and be able to restore them after your preferences go bad.
2) Create a new account if you suspect bad preferences and log as that new user to see if your project will work with a clean set of preferences, without having to trash your old set.Projects:
1) Save early, save often. Cmd-S should become second nature while editing.
2) Use Autosave Vault
3) Save your project to archive media at the end of every day. Use multi-session CD-Rs so that you will have a set of project milestones if you suddenly find that the corruption goes back longer than your autosave vault.Bill Lee
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[Andy Permar] “I want to expand my edit system with a pair of monitor speakers and an amp and get away from the little speakers that came from an old PC. I
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[staircar] “Thanks for replying so quickly. The images where the shimmer is most pronounced are 2473×1677, 2272×1704, and 2549×1848….. pretty big. I tried the motion blur but it didn’t do anything. I’ll try playing around with the motion blur, maybe increasing it to a certain point, and see if that works. If you have any more suggestions, keep ’em coming 🙂
OK, well I’d agree with Tom. A one-pixel high blur will greatly improve things. Not motion blur – use the de-interlace filter.
What you are seeing is your 30 frames per second (25 in PAL) stills being shown on a 60 fields per second (50 in PAL) display device (you are doing your evaluation on an external TV/reference monitor, right?) Every 1/30 of a second (1/25 in PAL), every second line of your image is being displayed, then 1/30 of a second (1/25 in PAL) later the alternate second line in your image gets shown, then 1/30th of a second later, the first set of alternate lines gets shown. This can cause an obvious and ugly flickering effect, depending of the difference between the adjacent scan lines in your stills. Large difference = big flicker. So, anytime you may get a moir