I'm running into a problem at this point that when two clips are placed on a sequence and a dissolved transition is assigned, then the application stalls and I'm forced to quit the application.

The clips are played fine in the viewer and frames are displayed fine in the canvas from the timeline, but when I try to play it back, it would get stuck.

Anyone experienced the same problem?

Heath,

I think FCPHD is little buggy in changing the display status sometimes. You should quit the application once and restart the application, set application to the right setting and open the file.

I get the same problem time to time, but by resetting it I get the right aspect.

I highly recommend to cut offline with DV anamorphic or DVCPRO HD and online the 1080i AIC footage in a 1920 X 1080 sequence.

Frederic

I converted the project using the media manager to Blackmagic jpeg HD offline codec. It took over 4 hours to convert 1 hour and 25 minuites footage. But after doing this, I'm editing offline with normal Blackmagic jpeg offline environment including the realtime output to the video out.
It's been working good for the last one hour or so. I will add my report when I convert the project to the online (AIC) quality.

Frederic,

What should the settings be then? Esp. The QuickTime compressor thing?

heath

Frederic, will FCP properly create the offline media? I never had any luck getting FCP to properly downscale while paying attention to the AIC clips fields.

In other news, I have a rough cut of the video I've been working on all week. It took 3 days to get After Effects to not give me corrupt files, and 6 hours to get a cut! :-)

http://homepage.mac.com/nweaver/.Movies/DOAFD.mov

My evil HD field to SD frame slow motion plan worked beautifully...

Nate, to make hyperlinks, do this:

[url ]www.dvinfo.net/conf[/url ]

Only remove the space between "l" and "]".

heath

Nate,

Thanks to you, my test with offline Blackmagic HD JPEG worked pretty well.
Getting back to full size AIC from HD JPEG also worked.

It would have never worked if you did not mentioned about changing the pixel size.

Thanks again.

Best,

Kaku

Kaku, I realized last night that I had your webpage bookmarked for another reason besides the FX1...I ride mtb too! I have a CDale Prophet w/Rohloff, etc.

Going riding now (taking the significant other on a mellow ride)!

Hahaha! Nate, we are all alike!

Prophet is a nice bike. I once owned a Gemini 1000 for great deal but the size was little large for me so I sold it.

You must have seen my Cedric Gracia clip (which was not that good because that was my first experience with PDX10).

Have a nice ride.

Frederic,

if my settings are like this:

Frame size: 1280x1080 DVCPro HD1080i60

(The anamorphic 16:9 is not checked)

The pixel aspect ratio is: NTSC - CCIR 60i / DV

The field dominance is: Lower (Even)

The Editing Timebase is: 29.97

And the QuickTime Video Settings are: Compressor - DVCPro HD 1080i60

Can I start editing in FCPHD? I'm chomping at the bit, so to speak, to get crackin'! I also want to get started on Release Me (720p30). And can I go back to iMovie HD?

Thanks,

heath

little OT - again about timecode
 

hello there,
i know i'm boring, this is not DIRECTLY connected with imovie solution, but:

does anyone know is TIMECODE still the same as in original/master tape when using imovie solution?

thanks,

filip

Re: little OT - again about timecode
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Filip Kovcin : hello there,
i know i'm boring, this is not DIRECTLY connected with imovie solution, but:

does anyone know is TIMECODE still the same as in original/master tape when using imovie solution?

thanks,

filip -->>>

No, timecode is not captured with iMovie.

thanks Nate!

filip

I've not had much luck getting AIC clips to play out of my Decklink HD Pro + HDLink setup.

When I tried to convert the AIC clips to either uncompressed or PhotoJPEG I had issues - the scaling up from the 1440 to 1920 in quicktime is quite poor, and produced noticible resolution loss and artifacting.

So, I exported 1440x1080 and then scaled up in the FCP timline to 1920x1080 and played out of the Decklink just fine.

Has anyone else noticed Quicktime doing a bad job of scaling HDV to full HD rez for use in other codecs, or is this a decklink quirk?

Graeme

Graeme,

My iMovie HD clips ARE in 1920 by 1080i. Looks fine, but I'm lost on getting the edited footage back to iMovie HD.

Also, anytime I try exporting to QuickTime, the image is stretched out horizontally.

heath

Well, Quicktime and FCP say that they're 1920x1080, but we know that they're not! They're 1440x1080 with a display flag so that they get displayed at 1920x1080!

Graeme

Funny thing is, set to DVCPro 1080i60 (1280x1080) and the compressor set to the same thing, it looks normal. But when I output it, it gets all stretched out the cast looks wide. How can I fix that?

heath

I've not tried taking AIC to DVCproHD yet... Have to try that next.

Graeme

This is the same problem I had...when Quicktime is doing background resizing from 1440 to 1920 you get the interlace chroma artifacts, etc.

When you resize the clips so the 1920 display flag is absent, and Final Cut has to do the anamorphic stretch instead of Quicktime, things work fine.

Also Graeme, if your AIC clips are 1440 and then you set the anamorphic flag in the FCP clip properties as opposed to stretching them on the timeline, FCP will do the anamorphic stretch without putting green RT rendering bars on clips. In other words, the resize becomes "free", instead of taking valuable RT resources.

Heath, to get footage back into iMovie you need to export 1440x1080 AIC codec, not DVCPRO HD.

After adopting Nate's explanation about 1440 x 1080, I'm doing fine with DecklinkHD. DecklinkHD displays AIC clips through its display out. But when you do something like placing transition, it would hang up.

So, I export the project to Blackmagic HD JPG, edit and apply it back to the AIC again. This works well.

So I have to switch the codec, huh? And export how? As a QT movie or a QT compression?

heath

As Frederic mentioned, it is faster to use "media manager" to convert the project. Caputer footage with iMovieHD, read it in with FCPHD, place them on a timeline with 1920 x 1080 AIC codec, make offline with media manger at Blackmagic JPG HD if you have DecklinkHD. It does all of the necessary resizing for you. Then after editing with JPG HD, use media manager again to convert the project to AIC, relocated and show the original AIC clips.

Maybe, I should make a new thread for this topic alone.

It rumored FCP HD will edit HDV natively? I not like all this HDV --> AIC confusions.

Davi,

When Apple release FCPHD which is compatible with HDV, the issues mentioned in this thread will most likely be solved.

The rumour is FCPHD to use AIC.

<<<-- Originally posted by Davi Dortas : It rumored FCP HD will edit HDV natively? I not like all this HDV --> AIC confusions. -->>>

FCP HD will almost certainly use the AIC method.

If you want to online HDV natively, there is LumiereHD.

Native editing, in my mind, would be to use the HDV MPEG2 codec on the timeline and have FCP able to do MPEG2 magic like the free software for the pc that comes with the JVC camera. I don't think this is going to happen, but I'm concerned about the quality of the AIC codec - anyone done any tests to see how good or bad it is??

What I'm hoping the AIC does is leave the I-frames of the HDV as compressed I-frames,, and also use them to decode the P and B frames back to I frames, and then store them, if you know what I mean. I don't know if that's how MPEG2 works - do you have to fully decode a P and B frame back to image data and recompress to something else or is there a state between being fully compressed and fully decompressed where the frame is independent like an I frame? Dunno...

Graeme

Graeme,

I will provide the files very soon.

Graeme,

I've been meaning to say (off topic) for you to say Hello to Wendy for me. As you probably know wendy and I were at York Uni, Ontario together for a year about a decade ago. I wish you both (belatedly) the best of luck with your new(ish) baby.

To the matter in hand. You can get MPEG2 (or MPEG4) onto the FCP timeline, it'll just always be unrendered, even without effects. However this timeline can be rendered out/exported, which is what I meant by native online.

Has anyone been able to extract MPEG2 I frames and figure exactly how big they are?

Any chance you'd be able to do the rather nifty difference test with a GOP of HDV and AIC that you did with Pixlet and PHOTOjpeg in your kenstone.net SheerVideo review? Unfortunately there do seem to be reports that there are additional artifacts in AIC as compared to native HDV

Thanks Dylan. Wendy says hello!

I've found that putting MPEG on the FCP timeline causes problems. It might be fine for a cuts only edit, but for more complex stuff FCP does weirdness and that can hurt.

I'm finding that just editing HDV seems to break it quite quickly. I don't know what Sony were using to edit their clips for the presentation, but the presented stuff didn't look too hot. The raw clips I converted myself to uncompressed look best, but I still see stuff in them. The AIC is, indeed, looking crumbly....

Graeme

So it looks like AIC introduces many compression artifacts. I've done some digging around trying to see if iMovie caches the transport stream before demuxing it and encoding it to AIC but no success.

Many of our customers are now saying that they prefer to keep using Lumiere HD because it allows you to preserve the quality better or encode to a 4:2:2 HD codec directly from the M2T.

Furthermoe, it looks like there is no way to choose better than 'medium' quality when exporting a timeline from FCP (You can from QT Pro).

We decided to continue development on Lumiere HD to introduce many new features and a slightly different workflow.

More on that soon...

Frederic

Frederic had me make a QT movie in 10 bit uncompressed, then open the QT movie and save it as an AIC at Best quality. However, when I did the first QT movie (10 bit uncompressed), I noticed that the image was stretched out vertically. I will now save as an AIC at best quality and see if it "flattens" out properly.

heath

<<<-- Originally posted by Frederic Haubrich : We decided to continue development on Lumiere HD to introduce many new features and a slightly different workflow. -->>>

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! This is great news.

Hopefully Apple will do their part and iron out the MPEG2 audio sync issue. HDV start/stop detection would be a nice addition.

<<<-- Originally posted by Frederic Haubrich : We decided to continue development on Lumiere HD to introduce many new features and a slightly different workflow.More on that soon... -->>>

what about TC support? will it be here?

filip

Filip,

It looks like this will be easier with the Z1 and the pro deck than it is with the FX1.

We'll try.

Frederic

Is anyone having audio sync problems? I thought I saw/heard some "slipping," but otherwise, nothing.

heath

<<<-- Originally posted by Frederic Haubrich : Filip,

It looks like this will be easier with the Z1 and the pro deck than it is with the FX1.

We'll try.

Frederic -->>>

thanks frederic,

that's what is needed !

fo course i'm talking about Z1.

filip


p.s.

say hello to tosha, and tell him this (fonetically!!!):

==========================
shtah rahdish seeneh? dhe see? :)))
==========================

translation: hey man (son) what are you doing, where are you...

it's kind of invitation when you see each other, and bit of slang in his native tounge. nothing offence.

For the FCP HD settings via iMovie HD captured clips, what should I put in for the HD10? Upper (odd) and Square pixels?

Thanks,

heath

Smoth workflow?!
 

With all due respect for the people who have generously given their time and expertise to this board - I would not call this a smooth workflow. A smooth workflow would be if Apple would not hold back features from their pro customers. What's worse is that I'm crashing just playing back footage in the timeline on a dual 2 ghz g5. It makes you want to get a pc!
Sam