cross dissolve transitions glitch/lag in FCP on 720p24N footage

J

jgrimson

Member
Coming across a problem I never saw when we had DVCAM footage. On "cross dissolve" transitions in FCP 5.0.4 the motion hangs momentarily between the 2 clips. It looks like a jerky pan but the original clips look fine it only occurs entering and exiting the dissolves. I've tried rendering out at the high precision YUV settings with no improvement. I really need to figure this out since the HVX footage is stunning but these dissolves don't cut it. Thanks.
 
Several questions here-- what is your storage medium (internal SATA, FW, RAID, etc etc)? What are your RT settings in FCP? How much RAM? Are you rendering before playing out the transition? While I confess to not owning an HVX yet due to finances (raise the violin track), I have edited 720pN footage and have not seen the problem. Perhaps more specifics about your system will help.

Ned Soltz
 
Sounds like your clip "handles" are to short. now this could be something else...I'm not sure of your experience with Final Cut....I know I fumbled through that my first few times using dissolves.


Depending on the length of the dissolve you need a little extra footage available in the each clip to keep the motion going between dissolves.....or maybe that dissolve needs to be fully rendered to view properly.
 
I've fiddled with RT settings. I have them at:
Safe RT
Dynamic
Dynamic

The dissolves are fully rendered and still lag. Media is on a Lacie 200G FW drive via FW800 connection. Editing on a 1.25 Ghz Powerbook, OSX 10.3.9, with 1G RAM.

Also, I've got plenty of handles on these clips. Thanks guys.
 
I'm kind of stumped....sounds like you should be fine then. The only other thing that popped to mind was if you have Wireframe on.....possibly the clip was bumped after the dissolve was placed in and created a keyframe.

Maybe check your motion tab and key if any "alien" keyframes are there. ...is this happening with multiple dissolves or just this one edit?
 
I'm stumped too kikndrummer. No keyframes are in there. If the dissolve enters or exits on a still frame you don't notice anything but if the shots are moving it is really jerky looking. I even tried other dissolves (additive, non-additive) and I'm getting the same problem. It's not my video card choking either since I exported the timeline and played it on another machine. This is not good.
 
I'm at a loss.....you pretty much did anything I would have. I would maybe try restarting the computer in case there is a system failure. :badputer:

....if that doesn't do it....I know myself, I would head down to the local pub, have a couple drinks and ask the bartender if they have any suggestions!

Best luck to you!
 
Before doing that, step through the transition frame-by-frame to see if there is indeed a lag in the footage, or if it's a media access speed issue!
 
Your problems are two-fold. One you can correct-- you should be at Mac OS X 10.4.5. I daresay that is a good deal of the problem. Next, firewire drives are simply not dependable for editing. You have no choice with a powerbook (actually, there is a SATA cardbus to allow you to edit with an external SATA drive). But I would first do an upgrade of your OS, trash your FCP prefs and then try it. Alternatively, if you have access to a faster Mac running the current OS with proper media storage, you might want to see if you can avoid dropping frames. And one more thing-- do a Render Only -> Mixdown before playing out. Somtimes writing that audio render file fixes dropped frame problems.

Ned Soltz
 
Guys, I've stepped through frame by frame. What is happening is that the footage stops for one frame right at the transition point! It is weird and NOT a keyframe that I can see. It's almost like an extra frame is laid in there. I'm editing in a 23.98 timeline; could there be some issue with the dissolves not matching in this timeline? I just don't see this as a computer or speed issue now, something else is happening. Also, Ned this is video only; no audio tracks.
 
It is adding a frame. I drop a 1:00 transition on an edit and it is actually 1:01. I can manually adjust the transistion by one frame, and it fixes the problem, but this is crazy. There has got to be another way to deal with this!
 
Well I've gone through and replace all my 1:00 transitions with :23 length ones and everything is smooth. My conclusion is that this is a 24 (23.98) timeline issue of some sort. Maybe everyone knows this and custom creates 23.98 transitions at those lengths but I sure didn't!
 
This is my last post on this subject and then I'll shut up. OK. changed all my 1:00 transitions to :23 in length in the 23.98 timeline. Going into a transition looks great. Now coming out it looks bad. This is definitley the better of the 2 options but it is still not right. I guess the transition lengths don't automatically conform to exact frames in the timeline or something. I'm stumped and need to move on with it the way it is.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top