1 essential clip with HUGE problem...pls HELP!!

P

powerdog

Veteran
Did entire project using nNovia hard drive, so there was no capture involved. One clip that I really need, when I try to open it, gives me the error message "incorrect time value." I've tried exporting from QTP in various ways, but I keep getting a posterized, shimmering effect during movement and fine, horizontal lines like an SD television (especially in lighter colors). Any suggestions on fixing this problem? Thanks!
 
One bit of additional info: when I have FCP analyze the bad file, it comes up as "video" but good files come up as "NTSC". Wrong codec? Not sure what to do at this point.
 
why dont you e-mail/call them, maybe they have some troubleshooting ideas for this..
 
Try duplicating the clip with the finder just in case the file itself is corrupt.
Can you open in QT Pro? Do a get info and check the format (codec, frame rate, sizes, etc) to see if there's anything odd compared to normal clip.
If you can open in QT trying do a save or an export. Export will convert it to whatever settings you want. Save will save self contained duplicate.
 
Save As and Export attempts didn't make the clip look any better. I should add that I shot the bad clip without sound or a mic -- didn't need sound for it. However, shot other clips the same way w/o problems.

Another clue is that the appearance of the problem clip varies widely from display to display. For ex, you can hardly see any problem on my PC laptop, on the LCD connected to my Mac it's passable, but on an HDTV it's terrible.

Someone suggested to me that I look at the QT "Show Movie Info" box. I see that the bad clip just says "Format: DV-NTSC, 720x480, Millions" but only the good ones follow that info with "Integer (big endian), Stereo, 48000 HZ, 16 bits".

Does Integer (big endian) mean anything in this context? Thanks!

P.S. I've posted a 23MB sample of the clip, if anyone has a few minutes to download it. It's at:
http://www.gmavt.net/~powerdog/sample/sampleclip
 
Integer just refers to the way the sound is stored. SInce there's no sound for the clip then it doesn't matter. Big indian is the order of bytes - Mac or Windows, but QT can handle it either way.

Sounds like you may have dropouts or problem recording in that area. Try it on a regular TV. Difference with systems is probably influenced by gamma differences.
 
I asked Graeme Nattress to take a look, as I didn't have much luck with his filters. This was his reply, in case it suggests any further ideas....


Hi Philip,

That's a freeky clip. When I put it on the timeline, I get severe corruption mixing with frames from other clips on the timeline. Wow.

Remove pulldown settings,Lower,
2:3
4 (WWSSW)AA

As for the corruption - looks like bad dropout, or severe MPEG2 compression...... Strange. I have no idea really.

The chroma is blocky in a 4:2:0 pattern not the 4:1:1 of NTSC DV, so I really don't know what's happened to it!!!

G Chroma Sharpen settings 4:2:0, Smooth then Sharpen, sharpen 100$%,anti-alias 100% seem to help a bit, but not too much :-(

That's by far and a way the strangest clip anyone's ever sent to me.

Graeme
 
Have you contacted nNovia? I had a problem with my Quickcapture and they took care of it for me. Their service was excellent. I don't know if your problem was with the camera or the capture unit but if it was the capture unit, they might have some advice.
 
I wrote to the person I've always dealt with there, but didn't hear back. Maybe she's left the company. Anyway, since I started this thread, I've gotten client to agree to reshoot. I'll bring a Powerbook along so I can check the clip before I put the equipment away.

What really puzzles me is that I did a few shots after the bad one, without turning off or adjusting the camera, and they came out fine.
 
The problem I had was the unit would suddenly default to .avi even though I had it set to .mov In the .avi mode I got picture but the sound on the clip was trashed. The lady I spoke to was Adrienne Aubry. She was the voice on the other end of the Tech Support line.
 
That's who I dealt with, and that's another problem I've had with the QC. In fact, the sound on this clip was trashed..so I used music over it instead. Do you think QTP somehow managed to open an AVI file and resave as QT, but did it badly?
 
Yeah, the sound in .avi was definately trashed for me. It was back in July when I talked with them because I needed it fixed before we started shooting in August. She had me send it in and they checked it out. She told me there was a firmware problem with it which they fixed for me. There was also some concern about the battery so they replaced that also. For some reason the unit was losing power and the file was corrupted. This had happened on several occasions before I sent it in for repair and hasn't happened since.

Since we also had tape in the camera, we used the tape as a backup. Of course that means logging and capturing instead of just copying the clip over. But it's always nice to have the backup. We used the QC for the twenty-five day shoot through August with no hardware problems. A couple of times there WAS operator error though. And when we did Glidecam shots we had to do it without the QC because the capture unit (firewire cable) threw the balance off too much smooth shots.

We only used the unit once since the end of August. We had to do a pickup late in November. We've been in post since September 1.
 
Adrienne told me that if the unit was working properly, once I set it to .mov, it would stay there and not default back to .avi Since I got the unit back it has remained in the .mov mode.
 
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