Trouble with P2 and Compressor

Spec-Comm

Spec-Comm

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Hello everyone. My lack of experience with FCP requires me to switch roles and ask you all for help. I know, this is embarrassing.

A client of ours sent this email to me and I was wondering if you can point us in the right direction.

I have a HPX 500 camera using P2 cards. We have Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard. We use Dual Adapter for putting in our P2 footage. Recently we have run into a very frustrating problem. We just got done editing a virtual tour for a salon and the we edited it and everything looked perfect and we were happy. We put the videos through compressor so that we could create a Vimeo and You Tube video for the client to look at it. When we viewed the video it looked very jittery and looked like it was doubling up on frames. We have since then tried everything possible to trouble shoot and we have no idea what to do. The raw footage looks good still but we are now running into some problems with jittery video with everything we have been shooting lately. The footage looks good on the p2 card when playing in the camera but when we bring in the footage into our Mac it is very choppy. We did bring it in through firewire and it looked fine. What do you think we should do. Please help this is horrible and very time sensitive, I have shoots coming up and I don’t feel confident at all in anything right now.

Below is what our YouTube video looks like, PLEASE HELP......
We are using:
Mac OS X 10.6.8
2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo
2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Leopard

FCP:
Version 7.0.1
Footage was shot in 1080i60
29.97 fps
Compressor DVCPRO HD 1080i60

Sequence settings:
Fame Size 1280 x 1080
Aspect Ratio – HD (1280x1080) (16.9)
Pixel Aspect Ratio – HD (1280ix1080)
Field Dominance – Upper (Odd) - We changed this from Lower (Even) because it gave us the best result so far.
Editing timebase – 29.97

QT Video Settings:
Compressor: DVCPRO HD 1080i60
Quality: 100%


YouTube file:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk9H6iBPNNQ



Thanks Marc
Click to expand...

Thanks in advance for the assistance!

Andrew Hoffman
Vice President
Specialized Communications Corp.
20940 Twin Springs Dr.
Smithsburg, MD 21783-1510 USA
800-359-1858
301-790-0103
Fax: 301-790-0173
andrewh@spec-comm.com
Skype ID: Spec-Comm
www.spec-comm.com
www.twitter.com/speccomm
 
I believe he's talking about the flickering when he pans. The client is here now showing us the issue so I will take a closer look to see what he is having trouble with.

Sincerely,

Andrew
 
How about doing a quick test to the right field and evaluating it in the area where the flickering occurs on a short upload.
 
altho he said it looks good in the card, it sure looks to me like panning too fast for the frame rate or shutter speed setting.
 
Spec-Comm said:
Hello Noah,

Thanks for the help. Where is the setting found for field order in FCP?

Thanks,

Andrew
Click to expand...

Andrew, I'm not Noah, but that information is in the quote you provided.

Sequence settings:
Fame Size 1280 x 1080
Aspect Ratio – HD (1280x1080) (16.9)
Pixel Aspect Ratio – HD (1280ix1080)
Field Dominance – Upper (Odd) - [highlight]We changed this from Lower (Even) because it gave us the best result so far. [/highlight]
Editing timebase – 29.97
 
Thanks David.

Dick,

The client had his original clip here and it not on the card. In fact, the glitches are in different places every time you play the clip back. It seems like its a problem with resources or something. We played it back though on a Dual Core Xeon MAC and it still had the glitches. HELP! It's a really odd issue.

Andrew
 
Andrew, is there any reason why this wasn't shot at 720/60p if its eventual delivery was the web? Or is it for the web?

I'm confused on this because if the source edit doesn't exhibit the thin line flickering, and it isn't for the web, then why the concern?
 
Field Dominance – Upper (Odd) - We changed this from Lower (Even) because it gave us the best result so far.
Click to expand...
That's really bizarre. If you are shooting NTSC interlaced, it should be lower (even).

But really, this should have been shot progressive.
Indeed, using a P2 camera, shooting 30PN is often the way to go.

everything looked perfect and we were happy. We put the videos through compressor
Click to expand...

Now THAT sounds like a problem with your Compressor settings.
Typically I export from FCP using Quicktime Same Settings,
then tweak export versions in Compressor. In order to get best results
from de-interlacing and resizing, you should really use Frame Controls.
The best settings are magic, but the render times will be extremely long.

It's also possible that the pans were too fast. Opening the shutter to get
some motion blur might have helped. If you have lots of time, you could
add fake motion blur in post.
 
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