Seeking conversion Guidance

[Mark Smith]

I shot recently for a British client here in NYC. Our shooting specs were 1080 25P and I set that accordingly on the AF. we recorded to AVCHD in Camera. Client calls me up and asks if I can give them pro res of the clips. I open an FCP 7 Project and import the clips setting a pro res codec preference.

When checking the clips after L&T in FCP I see some random clips that have green flashes in them or even lots of stuttering frames alternating between the image and a solid green background. The affected clips did not exhibit this is the clip viewer when i scrubbed through them at first.

I wiped the project, trashed the converted clips and started over. On the second pass the all 204 clips were converted but I still had some clips with the green anomaly, but they were different clips than the first conversion attempt. I know the original clips themselves arent bad, but something is going wrong in the conversion to pro res process.

Has any one encountered this before and what if anything is the solution to getting a clean conversion to pro res?

 

[Barry_Green]

Are you using USB or external drives?  Or the footage directly from SD cards? Where is the footage you're converting, coming from?

 

[Shooter]

Just a suggestion.

It maybe worth using ClipWrap for the conversion instead of FCP.

A simple re wrap of the file without a transcode.

 

[Mark Smith]

Just a suggestion.It maybe worth using ClipWrap for the conversion instead of FCP. A simple re wrap of the file without a transcode.

Answering barry's questions :I was doing L&T in fcp with the camera originals on a USB drive not the original card. I suspected a drive issue and tried unsuccessfully with different drive combos. The fact that the affected clips were different each attempt told me that it wasn't a corrupt clip issue. Background- I had used a 32 gb Panasonic card as original media and had a total of 204 clips on the card but I wasn 't near card capacity memory wise.I grabbed a copy of clip wrap after 2 failures by fcp 7.03 to L&T the clips properly and clip wrap knocked out a pro res re wrap in about 4 hours without a problem.

 

[Mark Smith]

Has anyone done a comparison of the resultant files from a Clip Wrap conversion to pro res and a FCP L&T to pro res.

How would one go about comparing files any way?

 

[dhart1949]

I second the suggestion of ClipWrap. Just downloaded the demo and transfer rate was 6X realtime. Much faster than transcoding to Pro Rez. Video played back flawlessly on FCP timeline. IMO the quality was indistinguishable from the AVCHD master footage. For just $49 it's going in my transfer toolbox.