Hi everyone,
I was able to find a solution after about 40 hours of searching the internet and arguing with chatgpt haha
I used Handbrake to transcode the footage. The problem was the HDR Iphone uses. It could have also been the variable frame rate. In Handbrake I exported in h264 (lower quality sadly) , and set the color space to REC 709. And then lastly I set it to a constant frame rate. For one of the videos I had to do it twice for some reason.
I had also had connectivity issues when downloading the original files so that may have cause some of the corruption. I downloaded the originals again, then transcoded in Handbrake. After that I right clicked on the footage in the project panel and selected – modify – interpret footate. And from there I double checked the color space and settings on the footage.
I hope this helps someone!