serious codec issues mac?

[aceswild]

I've been trying to convert (re-wrap) a ton a of avis to movs for a couple of days now and it's not gone well. Final cut pro was running quite badly with them but it managed to do some if i gave it a few at a time. i didn't want to have to rely on it at the risk of leaving it over night and coming back to it crashed.

so i tried mpeg streamclip, which did the job but the videos came out looking interlaced. i tried to install ffmpeg but got lost.

I dont know at what point this happened, but a codec or something must have become corrupted, because now final cut crashes everytime i try to do save out one avi as a mov, and mpeg streamclip AND quicktime have both slowed to a crawl when i open an avi and so to "save as" - mov. before, they would both rocket through it, but now both are painfully slow. does anyone know what i might have done?

[Baldrick]

quicktime pro.

[edDV]

"avi" as in DV camcorder video? DV camcorder video is interlaced.

[Cornucopia]

You said "re-wrap" the movies like you were sure they were completely cross-compatible, but...ARE THEY?

How do you know? Where did they come from?

A simple guess could lead me to believe that you've got AVIs with a HuffYUV codec in them, or DivX3, or x.264, all of which don't have EXACT and SEAMLESS analogs on the Mac side. (some of these are much easier to munge than others)

Another simple guess could lead me to believe that you've got Type1 DV-AVI's, which QT (and by extension FCP, and probably MPEGStreamClip even) is documented as NOT SUPPORTING. Of course, a simple Type1->Type2 conversion would fix that problem.

Give us more real info. Sources, types, expected destinations, available soft-and-hardware, workflow...

Scott

[pixel zombie]

post a small clip of one, i'd like to try converting one of them with visualhub

[aceswild]

the codec for our avis, through VLC, reads DVSD.

I captured all of these myself through premiere pro 2.0.

This is what happened on the other forum I posted on. People seemed to be concerned about the workflow, but the workflow isn't what I'm asking about. That's something i was looking at before and happily figuring out myself, which i've had to stop because of a different problem:

The day before yesterday I could open an AVI in Quicktime Pro (which we already have) and go to "Save As". It would then save as a MOV in about 45 seconds (for a 12 minute video file). When i came back in yesterday, the same process with the same files takes an hour.

Before this happened MPEG streamclip could do it fine, and Final Cut Pro could do a few at a time too. Now that this has happened neither can handle the conversion.

I was sure it was a re-wrap because of the time it takes to do it, and because when MPEG streamclip was doing it, there was nothing in the process box that said "encoding at X.XXMbps" like it normally does. In streamclip i was going through the save as function, not the export function.

I know DV is interlaced, but these AVIs dont look interlaced before the conversion in streamclip (i can't see any horizontal lines at the edge of moving objects) and afterwards they do. When quicktime could convert them they didn't come out looking like this.

I do very much appreciate everyone's help.

[terryj]

We are almost there, thanks for the more input in your last post.

A simple question if you don't mind: It seems that you are capturing
footage....Why not simply capture the footage in FCP? rather than
Premiere? FCP would capture the footage in as DV Stream format,
and then from there, once edited, you would be able to export
to .mov from FCP and your problem would be solved,
with less hassle.
Or am I missing something?

There are conversion problems between DV-AVIs captured with
Premiere Pro and getting them to open & export correctly in FCP.

If you can capture the footage directly into FCP ( logical choice),
since you are editing in FCP, this would be the way to go, and everything
would be smooth from start to finish.

Lastly, DVSD, according to a quick google search says it is either a
DVMaster Pro Video file or it is encoded with Panasonic DV-AVI Type-2
codec.
I'll assume the latter. If the footage is coming off a Panasonic
Camcorder, I'd go back an re-import ( capture) the footage into
FCP.

[aceswild]

We had hundreds of tapes to capture and archive at once, so we captured some on the FCP machine, but most on the two windows laptops through premiere to save time. It's come out at about 10tb.

fair enough that the codec we've used will cause us problems, and recapturing will take too long, so we'll have to re-encode the avis, but this isn't the problem i'm concerened with at the moment.

im concerned that something essential has been altered within quicktime or final cut in the last 2 days

something that took 45 seconds to do 2 days ago now takes over an hour. the actual avis haven't changed since, the same avis now take 100x more time to re-wrap than they did 2 days ago.

whatever it is quicktime, FCP and mpeg streamclip all reference to do re-wraps has broken or changed, and i'm trying to sort this problem out first.

i was sorting out the issue of conforming our archive before, and now i've stopped because i want to sort this issue out.

i dont mean to come across as impatient, i really do appreciate people trying to help, i've just had a lot of comments regarding my workflow, which is not what i'm asking about right now.

[Cornucopia]

You're re-wrapping the SAME AVIs? I think not. More likely, you've got a bunch of AVIs, all supposedly done one after the other on 2 windows pcs. But they probably weren't all done back-to-back in one sitting. So my guess is:

Somebody setup PP during one (or more) session with the wrong presets (NOT std Type2 DV-AVI...), so the clips that were capped during that session are out of whack, whereas the others might be fine. (See, it IS about workflow)

Do this:
Take a clip that you KNOW you successfully converted the other day, and try converting it again. If it won't, you know that your current FCP setup/system is messed up, and you'll have to do a re-install/rollback or something.

Also, don't just get the fourcc from FCP or MPEGStreamclip, use a better media info reader, like Gspot or MediaInfo (both PC apps, sorry).

Also, check out those (both known good and suspect) clips on a DIFFERENT MAC. You know, isolate the problem area and all...

Information gleaned from these 3 steps will be able to steer you (or hopefully us at least) in the right direction.

Scott

[aceswild]

That was the first thing i tried, converting an AVI I know works. I did the whole capture job myself, and never changed the project settings.

Anyway, it's fixed itself now. I've just come in this morning and it's fixed. Which is very annoying. I've just re-wrapped one of the files that wouldn't yesterday, it took about 45 seconds. I've imported the re-wrap into FCP and it seems fine with it.

Is there any good reason that I can't use these re-wraps? I thought DV -Pal was a universal codec. Final cut reads the compression (on the mov) as DV Pal, should i get another program to make sure it is this?

[terryj]

DV- Pal isn't really a universal codec, not in the sense of what your thinking of like say, XVID or DIVX.
In fact, Apple's own documentation
points to the fact that they recommend you base the DV Stream
codec choice more on what your camera will be importing,
as that is what their codecs are primarily based around:

Apple DV/DVCPRO Codec - NTSC
Apple DV - PAL Codec
Apple DVCPRO - PAL Codec
Apple DVCPRO50 - NTSC Codec
Apple DVCPRO50 - PAL Codec

Final Cut Pro[/url] 6 Manual]
Pal or NTSC for that matter would refer to
the video (broadcast) standard you shot the footage in and
are outputting it out to for Broadcast (NTSC, 29.9fps, PAL 25 fps),
where as a codec like DV/ DVCPRO would be the codec
you would have used for video imported directly into FCP from
the Panasonic camera.
(final cut pro manual, page 326-341 in "Choosing Easy Setups")

I would still believe at this point that your basically "fooling" FCP
and somewhat, FCP is going along with it, but will and rightfully
should occasionally "freak out" because your going against
what it is made to accept.

You may not think its your workflow, but yeah, it is,
and you'll keep encountering this issue again and again.

It really is simple to make just a small adjustment to your workflow now:
either start ingesting in FCP on the mac now, or invest in Quicktime
for Windows on the PC with Premiere on it.
In Premiere Pro, since the clips are small, export them to the PC's HD.
Then open the file in Quicktime for Windows on the PC, and export
(not save as and re-wrap them) them as Quicktime .mov files.
They will then be in a proper format for FCP not to freak out on.
You can try a re-wrap in Quicktime for Windows, but
I personally have had no such luck doing it this way, and instead
have had to File--Export--Quicktime .mov file on the PC
to get an acceptable file into FCP on a Mac. YMMV.