OT I Think: FCP oddities.

farss wrote on 6/8/2004, 4:58 AM

OK, No I haven't done a Grazie but I have a good client who has yet to see the light. Running something like version 1.3.
Anyway I'm having problems with the DV footage she gives me. And its the wierdest problem and its happened with more than one clip including the latest one.
It looks like interlace artifacts but it isn't, they're more than one scan line apart, in some places it shows up as say the 5th line missing on something with motion but not everything in the frame is affected. At first I'm thing OK, the field order is wrong or it's progressive scan and I've actually fixed a section before by rendering it to progressive, haven't a clue how that worked but it did the trick.
Anyway with the latest clip she gave me today it's back and she needs the stuff on DVD post haste. At first I just ignored it, thought it was the usual interlaced material on the PC monitor illusion. But after she'd gone I put it up on the external monitor and horror of horrors they're still there. I decided to just try buring it to DVD and yep, still there.
Now comes the truly wierd part, playing around with external preview I dropped the preview quality down to Draft (320x240) and problem goes away. I'll add there's no FXs involved, this is just straight captured material straight off the TL so this isn't a Vegas problem.
The only think I can think is happening is the problem material was rendered out in FCP to low res QT which has then been upscaled back to PAL DV and what I'm seeing is the results of bad interpolation.
Now I probably can't (and shouldn't) find a way to fix this in Vegas but if anyone's got a plausable explaination of how this could have happened I'd love to hear it, if your an OLD FCP user maybe you've got a clue.

Comments

farss wrote on 6/8/2004, 6:24 AM

I've had a thought on how to fix this, not something I'd like to do but anything to help out a client, even if they do use FCP and should be slowly boiled in oil.
IF, as it seems I can make this seem to go away during preview at 'draft' setting is there anyway I can render out like that to a new AVI.
I've tried rendering to a new track with quality set to Draft but that seems to make no difference, about the only think I'm thinking to do is record off the preview and capture that back in but man that sounds like a really wierd approach to fix anything.
I've also tried to render to a new track at 360x288x32 but that still has the artifacts, just low res version of everything.

farss wrote on 6/8/2004, 6:55 AM

Well, I've made the problem go away!
Rendered out as 360x288 progressive uncompressed, bought that back in and renderd that out as standard PAL DV and no more artifacts.
Maybe next time SPOT is in B&H confronted by the FCP clan he could demo using Vegas to fix a FCP screwup, that should really raise a few eyebrows.
Well OK, I wouldn't say it was FIXED, it's as soft as a babies butt but the artifacts are GONE.
Now I need some good FCP training for this client, anyone recommend a good book?

Spot|DSE wrote on 6/8/2004, 6:57 AM

Richard Harrington's "On the Spot" series book on FCP is a very good book. And of course, the series rocks. :-)

TheHappyFriar wrote on 6/8/2004, 7:48 AM

Did you try bringing it into virtual sub (or tmpgenc, or something else) just to see what it looks like in another program? Just to take Vegas out of the problem.

farss wrote on 6/8/2004, 8:09 AM

I'll try playing it in WMP and I've asked the client to hook her camera up to her TV and play it back to see what it looks like. I'm really not suspecting Vegas, parts of it are fine, even parts of the frame are OK and this isn't the first time I've had this issue with her stuff. I've worked on a lot of her stuff straight from her camera tapes and not a single issue, it's just the stuff she's put through FCP and even then not all of it. Also I've used both V4 and V5 with the same problem.
She is running OS8 or 9 and a very old FCP release on a very old Mac so anything is possible but once this long encode is finished I'll have another look at the original material in another program.
I'll bet she's only ever looked at in the tiny preview window on the Mac and in the LCD monitor on the camera.

farss wrote on 6/8/2004, 3:28 PM

Well I tried playing it in WMP9, at half size it looks fine, much the same as what happened using Vegas preview in draft. At full screen in WMP9 artifacts are there.
Using Vegas to do some black magic as I described and it look fine even after encoding to DVD.