FCP 6.0.5. transcoding problem

Z1Scottie

Z1Scottie

Well-known member
I got my cam today. LOVE it! footage is superb. I just can't get FCP
to transcode. imovie09 works fine, but when I try to transcode to
pro res, i get a gray screen as video clip. audio is fine. I think this particular
machine is screwey, but I cant isolate the problem. any help would be appreciated.
 
So is there no native FC support yet?

And you still have to transcode to ProRes?

Is L&T the best bet or should I get a third party software?
 
There is Neoscene, and a bunch of others.

Pro res work very well.

Getting RT AVCHD native editing is not going happen soon in my view if at all.

The sooner you leave long GOP and get to intra frame, the better.
 
Sorry if it is dumb but what is RT?

FC won't support AVCHD? Ever? Why? It would be relatively easy and there will be a lot of HMC's out there for a long time. I am talking with an angles that gets customers who want a video of their fishing trip and this sort of codec isperfect the them. You need to film the whole trip just to catch that moment. 21Mbps is excellent, and they can't afford an EX1.
 
An editor I work with had a similar problem. He upgraded his operating system from Tiger to Leopard and he upgraded his FX Factory plug in from version 1 to 2.06. I have heard from others that certain plug ins can cause conflicts.
 
RT = real time.

FCP does support AVCHD. It provides transcodes to an editing format, either AIC or Pro Res.

My research indicates that it would not be "relatively easy" to facilitate real time, native editing of AVCHD due to the computational nature and complexity of mpeg4.

I don't see any widespread support for real time, native AVCHD editing on any platform. If you wander through posts, you'll find one or two people working satisfactorily in real time and using native AVCHD files.

Wish it were otherwise.
 
this past few days I have been editing AVCHD files turned to prores with FCP 6.0.5
and mac pro 2.66, at first yeah I had a couple of clips go bad from the jump but after that its been all good news, I get real time playback with small FCP effects added (crossfades,flashes etc)
 
Well then AVCHD is a big farce... though with faster chips the issue should go away. I hoe they do give native capabilities to FC cause otherwise it is quite ridiculous to shoot to cards yet not be able to copy paste and edit... it is a big tease.

How fast is the encoding to Pro Res via L&T on Mac laptops? Not the new ones, a few years older. Just a rough idea.
 
USLatin said:
I hope they do give native capabilities to FC cause otherwise it is quite ridiculous to shoot to cards yet not be able to copy paste and edit... it is a big tease.
Click to expand...
Er... if that's how you really feel, you surely don't want to use FCP then. FCP doesn't allow editing from the cards from any tapeless format that I can think of. FCP always requires you to convert the files, and always will, because apparently they have a corporate mandate to always always always require files to be converted to Quicktime format.

It doesn't have to be that way, and FCP could stop it if they wanted to, but it'll take users complaining to change anything. For example, you can edit XDCAM-EX footage right off the SxS card in EDIUS. You don't have to run Clip Browser to convert the files to MXF files, you just stick the card in and drag the footage to the timeline. EDIUS can also edit P2 footage right from the P2 card. Or AVCHD footage right from the SD card. It supports all of them, natively. Premiere Pro CS4 supports editing AVCHD or P2 footage right from the cards; not sure about SxS. And it does it on the Mac too.

Obviously this type of workflow is entirely possible, but if that's the type of workflow you want, you won't get it from Apple. They don't support native editing of any tapeless format, do they? Their approach works fine for tape-based or disc-based, but for tapeless it is at odds with what is possible.

Wish it were otherwise.

At least for P2 stuff you can get around it by using an MXF import plug-in. I don't know if such things exist for SxS yet; I doubt there's any such provision for AVCHD yet. Seems like it should be possible; AVC-Intra is supported only by L&T but with Calibrated you can get native editing, so maybe Calibrated could do something comparable for AVCHD?
 
I personally think there is a lot of different opinions about AVCHD with FCP
I can understand people being disappointed by the fact that you have to transcode to prores but I may sound crazy but I actually enjoy that part of my workflow, it kicks back to when I was editing DVCPRO HD files, I sit and see what I have on the Long and Transfer window and take it from there and sometimes when I am lazy I just hit command+A and let all the clips transfer while I get a pepsi from the fridge, coming from a dvcprohd background, now that I am editing avchd files, it feels just about the same when I am converting to prores as when I was doing dvcpro hd, I am on a macpro with fast externals so I dont know how a macbook pro would react
hope this helps

USLatin said:
Well then AVCHD is a big farce... though with faster chips the issue should go away. I hoe they do give native capabilities to FC cause otherwise it is quite ridiculous to shoot to cards yet not be able to copy paste and edit... it is a big tease.

How fast is the encoding to Pro Res via L&T on Mac laptops? Not the new ones, a few years older. Just a rough idea.
Click to expand...
 
I appreciate Barry's remarks on FCP, but my views on the subject have changed.

There is a difference between editing natively and editing natively in REAL TIME.

Save a very few people here, Adobe has yet to provide native editing of AVCHD footage in Real Time in either CS3 or CS4. 720 is not supported at all.

I don't know about Edius, but I don't see many if any posts about RT editing in Edius.

The point being that the sooner you get away from Long GOP to a proxy codec, the better you can actually be creative in your editor. And grading is nearly impossible in my experience.

Soon or later the AVCHD has to be transcoded to some delivery format.

As to mxf files, I with Barry 100% -- you should have the option to edit natively.
 
I'm on a MacBookPro:
Mac OS 10.5.6
Processor: 2.2 GHz Intel Core Duo
Memory: 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

I ALWAYS have problems when transfering footage to the laptop. When I open the Log & Trasnfer window and select the SD card (on my desktop), the clips NEVER show up right away. It ALWAYS takes more than 30 seconds to show them, then I can start trasnfering.
Somethign tells me this should be an issue.

I tried it both with a USB Trascend card reader, and connecting the camera straight to the computer. I always have to wait for the clips to "show up".

Other than that, the footage in Apple Pro Res works wonderfully in my MacBookPro. I haven't had an issues while editing. AWESOME!
 
i found that if i copy the private folder over to a hard drive it goes a lot quicker. adds another step to the mix, but you then have a backup of the card.
 
I put the card into a USB card reader, and insert it in a USB hub; when it mounts on my Mac desktop, I double click it, and drag/copy the PRIVATE folder to my desktop, and remove the drive with the card.

After opening FCP, I simply open the Log & Transfer window, and all of the clips on the card just automatically show up. I don't have to nagivate to where the card is, choose a custom path, etc. All the clips are just there.
I select any or all of them, add them to the queue, and wait.

Time wise, they transfer over about 2 to 3 times faster than real time.
That is, an hour of clips takes about 20-25 minutes. When finished, the ProRes clips are in my capture scratch/project folder, and in my browser. I can then trash the PRIVATE folder on my desktop, and get to work editing.

I have also not noticed the 4GB limit; no separate clips or divisions, or glitched frames around the 4GB/20-25 minute mark. I've load in clips that were over an hour long, with no breaks or glitches at all.

I'm running FCP 6.0.5, and my HMC150 came with the latest 1.19 firmware.
 
It seems Vegas 9 now will support AVC HD naively. I didn't mean to make my other posts sound harsh, obviously FCP is still an awesome NLE. I will be editing a show that will shoot on an HMC-150 and I'll likely get hundreds of hours of footage. I like the idea of being able to edit natively then render out something more suited for grading and working off that file Maybe I'll break it up into smaller clips or render them as indivicual clips with some sort of batch which I think you can do off Vegas. I just hope that I will be able to cut in RT. No grading at all, hopefully some transitions though... all at the highest HMC 1080 at 24 or 30 fps, that has not yey been decided.

Really all I need to do is to get the rough cut before I transcode. If I can do the batch render to keep clips as individuals and rebuild the project with the new files that would be best... maybe all I need to do is to separate my fades so I get the extra tail and head for them and then replace the clips on the timeline with the actual transitions...

Thanks for the explanation Barry, I know too little about FC
 
Ok, so would a one year old-ish MackBook be able to edit 1080 ProRes 4:2:2?

I am not doing this myself the people doing the L&T are on an other state with their HMC. Do you have the option to select different settings in case their laptop can't handle the files?
 
USLatin said:
Ok, so would a one year old-ish MackBook be able to edit 1080 ProRes 4:2:2?
Click to expand...
As long as the files are being captured to and read from a secondary drive, I believe you should be okay. The dual 2 GHz G5 that I use at work can handle ProRes files, so I think a one year old MacBook should perform admirably.

To be fair, I've only used standard quality (not HQ) 480/60i and 720/24p ProRes files on my G5; I've yet to try using 1080i/p clips. But even then, I think the laptop in question should be fine.
 
Ok, that is encouraging, thank you. Unfortunately the difference from 720 to 1080 is large, so if someone can shed a bit more light on this I'd appreciate it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top