[Jon Baum]

I just updated Catalina to 10.15.3 which was released today. I imported new Canon Vixia HF G10 footage into Final Cut Pro X v10.4.8.

No digital artifacts upon playback in FCPX or after exporting to a *.mv4 video file.

Past video content which played with glitches in earlier Catalina versions now play normally without any spurious effects.

Appears to be (re)fixed. Hope others have the same experience.

[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

[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.

[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.

[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’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.

[Jon Baum]

I have reported the digital anomolies issue with Apple Pro Apps support and have been working with an excellent Apple Creative Media Senior Advisor to gather pertinant information on FCPX, MacOS (Catalina) from my MBP laptop and also from a fresh Catalina install on an external drive partition. In all cases, direct import from my Canon Vixia HF G10 camcorder into FCPX (latest version) produces the “weird glitches” upon playback in FCPX or from exported (.m4v) video files.

The Apple rep will also try to observe the glitches from his test iMac with the camera archive file I have provided to him, as another example on a separate system. He suspects that the “non-standard” AVCHD codec from Canon might be at issue when Mojave was updated to Catalina (“something may have fallen through the cracks” in video codecs).

I am asking anyone reading this thread, who has upgraded to MacOS Catalina, to repeat those processes which led to the “weird glitches” in the past to see if this is also reoccuring for you, and please report back in this thread. Thanks.

[Jon Baum]

I just updated to MacOS Catalina 10.15.1 and re-imported footage from my Canon Vixia HF G10 that showed the digital anomolies under 10.15. Same glitches appear during footage playback – I’ve sent in a FCP bug report last week. Hopefully they will re-address this problem.

I did follow Joe Marler’s process of reading the mounted volume from the camera’s SD card with EditReady which nicely spanned the packaged .mts files and converted to a *.mov file that was devoid of any glitches.

[Jon Baum]

It’s BAAAAACK. Same glitchy issues importing from my Canon Vixia HF G10 into Final Cut Pro v10.4.7 under MacOS 10.15 (Catalina). Workaround continues to be copying *.mts files to my MacBook Pro desktop from the camcorder’s SD card and then using EditReady to join the .mts files and then rewrap into a single .MOV file which is then imported into FCP – without the artifact glitches. Hope the FCP team at Apple sees this post and gets it on their radar to fix, again.

[Jon Baum]

I’ve updated to MacOS 10.13.5 and then imported 4 clips from my Canon Vixia HF G10 camcorder into FCPX 10.4.2. So far, so good. No digital anomalies. This is part of an e-mail I’ve received today as a reply from my feedback report of this thread’s issue through the FCPX app:

Hi Jon,

This is Chris from Apple Pro Apps in Cupertino. Thank you for your recent feedback about using Canon AVCHD clips in Final Cut Pro.

We believe this issue has been resolved in the latest macOS update, which was released earlier today. At your earliest convenience, please update to macOS 10.13.5, see if your issue has been resolved, and report back with your results.