7D Footage Jitters and Jumps!
 

Hi,

I need some help with this please.

7D footage jitters and jumps, skipping frames (regular cadence), when is played on QT and FCP. It doesn't do it, for instance, with the VLC player (more color contrast but it plays fine). Frame rate is 1920/ 25p/24p. I haven't tried different frame rates. I've used Lexar and SanDisk cards and there's no difference. I'm thinking is probably the codec or something but I really don't have a clue.

Any thoughts??

Thank you very much!

Javier

I've just test it on a MacPro and on a Macbook pro (intel) and it works fine. The computer I have problems with is a G5. I've updated the QT but still the same problem.
Thanks for the advice!

I was wondering the same. When I watch some 7D footage on vimeo it seems to jitter a bit - especially on camera movement or movement in frame. I take it this my MacBook's processor not being able to handle the vimeo streaming rather than the 7D footage itself?

It could just be a processing thing - if you re-encode the files to an intermediate format, it'll probably get rid of the stuttering.

...so the original 7D footage doesn't jitter at all?

Well, I'm thinking that because of the TYPE of H.264 encoding that is used - very high bitrate, but no B frames - it's gotta take a HUGE amount of processing power. For whatever reason, VLC doesn't take all that much overhead compared to Quicktime Player, and on a G5, that may make the difference between stuttering and smooth playback.

I might have the answer for you. I was having the same problem & it appears that if you use Neo Scene from CineForm it will convert the file & make it easier to play & process in your video editor. It appears these 7D MOV files do not like playing on media players in their native form that you download from your camera into your pc & it really pushes your pc too hard during editiing.

I just ordered my Neo Scene & have not loaded it yet (work keeps getting in the way) but I have spoken to several people & it appears that is the solution.

Heads up, Videoguys have Neoscene for $89 for new customers.

It's definitely the h.264 and not your footage. I promptly convert all my clips with MPEG Streamclip to ProRes 422 and it plays beautifully on my Quad G5 and my Macbook Pro.

Vimeo I find stutters on computers with slower graphics cards. My Macbook Pro has a GeForce 8600 GT with 512mb ram and Vimeo plays great. My G5 and other Intel iMacs at the church stutter on the HD movies on there.

Thank you very much to all of you.

I've worked with HDV footage (no h264) on the same computer and it played fine.

G5 is Dual 2.7 and 6.5 GB of ram. Graphic card is an ATI Radeon 9650 256 mb. Therefore I think is powerfull enough to play 7D footage.

On camera plays correctly.

I haven't tried to re-encode it yet. I'll do it later on.

But why it would play on VLC and not on QT?

Do you have any solution??

Thank you

Javier

I've re-encode it to Apple TV format and it looks fine.

Convert it to ProRes

If you've got a Mac, rather than a PC, what is the best format to re-encode it to, and with which software? Also, does this re-encoding degrade the quality at all?

No problem with ProRes either (good news). I'll have to re-encode it anyway so I don't think is it a big issue.
Jim, you have to re-encode it to ProRes to edit it properly and as far as I'm concerned it doesn't degrade the quality of the image.

Jim, as I and multiple other people have suggested previously in this thread, convert it to ProRes 422. ProRes is a compression codec designed by Apple for editing.

From Wikipedia:

ProRes is an intermediate codec, which means it is intended for use during video editing, and not intended or practical for end user viewing. The benefit of an intermediate codec is that it retains higher quality than end user codecs while still requiring much less expensive disk systems compared to uncompressed video.