[Jeff Coleman]

Thank you.

[Jeff Coleman]

Thank you.
What kind of MPEG-2 do you send?

[Jeff Coleman]

Today I don’t see the plug-in at the link listed on the press release.

Can we get the Creative Cow team to take down or correct the false press release from its home page then?

[Jeff Coleman]

[Tom Donnelly] “I attempted a workaround of extracting the text track from the original exported QT and “Adding to movie” of the h264 QT using quicktime. Then I turn off the text track but keep on the popup that says Chapters > Text Track under “Other Settings” in the properties window of the h264 QT. The chapters are then visible in the lower right of the viewer window. BUT – when I close the movie and “save” then re-open, they are gone…argh!”

The markers don’t flow through using Matrox’s MAX.
The workaround mentioned above and referring to Step 8 below doesn’t work. A couple of times I got it to take the track but as mentioned above the markers didn’t show when re-opening the movie.

Is there anyway to get the markers to show up when you open the movie?

QT 7.6.4
OS 10.5.8

[Jeff Coleman]

Well a little more research at the Matrox site came up with a thread started in October, 2009 aptly summarized by the following entry:

“It’s definitely a bug and one that they have acknowledged and are looking to fix – a fairly major bug at that! No timescales yet on a fix.

I’m using the workaround of extracting the Text track of the original file and applying it to the compressed file using QuickTime 7. It’s a pain but it does work.”

There you have it. Software bug and an inconvenient workaround. For more info on extracting that text track see this tutorial:

https://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/chaptertracks.html

[Jeff Coleman]

However….

I just experimented with making the field dominance “Upper” and voila! The jaggies disappeared even though the clip is progressive. So you’re on to something there. But I don’t want to build an interlaced project as it’s mostly graphics and intended for the web.

So I tried another experiment…

I took the clip I exported from FCP and put it into Compressor. Easy.
Compressor displayed the clip without the jaggies (same in QT player BTW). OK good.
I compressed the clip with the same codec (Apple ProRes HQ) and field dominance set to same as source (Frame Controls off). (I just used a preset and didn’t change anything so it should have just recompressed the clip with a new name.) OK easy, if not wasteful due to the recompression degradation.
I imported that Compressor recompressed clip into Motion. I imported the orginal FCP clip into Motion. Motion’s project properties field dominance = “None”. The FCP clip had jaggies. The Compressor clip didn’t.

Summary:
Somehow Motion is not recognizing the field dominance properly from FCP exported Apple ProRes HQ clips but does recognize it from Compressor exported clips.
Can anyone confirm this?
Why is this happening?
How can I fix it?

BTW these clips were originally captured using a Kona LHe on a FCP 6.0.6 running OS 10.5.8. Then they were brought into a FCP 7 running OS 10.5.8 and exported.

[Jeff Coleman]

Thank you.
Field dominance is set to “None” to match the clip.

[Jeff Coleman]

Render quality = best or good (tried both)
Resolution = Full

Remember both the FCP sent clip and the directly imported clip are in the same real project with the above pictured results.

[Jeff Coleman]

Hmmm. Sounds like a good mystery.
1. It could be a bad video card or bad connector on the card.
2. Sounds like a mis-EQd video distribution amp, but you said you’ve hooked it directly to the waveform (changed cables no doubt).
3. What happens when you come out Firewire from FCP and look at the output of a DV deck on your waveform? Spikeys still there? Luminance or chrominance Spikeys?
4. Take the computer back to the old space and see if the problem is still there. If not, move back. 😉

[Jeff Coleman]

Zak, thanks the filter was a quick workaround.

Mikey, CMYK to RGB was the culprit indeed! Change the Illustrator document to RGB and re-save it didn’t quite exactly work however. I had to:
1. Change the Illustrator file to RGB as you mentioned: File>Document Color Mode>RGB Color
2. Change the color tab to RGB in Illustrator from CMYK.
3. Select the blacks of the image (which now display R=35, G=31, B=32) to black (R=0, G=0, B=0).
4. Save the image.
5. Black image looks black now in Motion.

Thanks again.