Importing h.264 mp4 files into After Effects bug?

[Flynn]

So my friend gave me a couple of h.264 mp4 files which were encoded using Handbrake. He wants me to make them into a video grid using After Effects. The video grid is just gonna be about 10 seconds long.

Unfortunately, whenever I try to import them into After Effects, they're only 1 second long and are basically unusable. On the project window, this is what I see:



I'm aware h.264 is a delivery format and not an intermediary, but I'm only gonna be editing a very short clip without any compositing or anything. I have considered converting all the files but that will take a little more time (conversion time) and well, it just adds more work (albeit not much).

I can import other h.264 files into AE just fine (eg. from my pocket camcorder) but these ones specifically just don't work.

[Baldrick]

You can try remux to an avi with mp4camtoavi. ANd then edit the avi in after effects.

[Flynn]

You can try remux to an avi with mp4camtoavi. ANd then edit the avi in after effects.

Thanks for your suggestion. I'm quite sure converting them to .avi would work, but I'm trying to find a way to minimise the time needed to edit these because there are quite a few HD files that are a couple minutes long.

Is there no way to solve it without using another program?

[poisondeathray]

what does mediainfo view=>text say about them? are they variable frame rate ?

copy & paste the report back here

[Flynn]

I've managed to figure it out:

After checking out MediaInfo for the files, nothing looked out of the ordinary. Frame rate was standard 23.976. First I tried doing Interpret Footage in After Effects, but that didn't solve the problem, it revealed the rest of the video but it was still not the correct length.

I was about to encode something else in Handbrake when I noticed the Framerate settings under the Video tab. By default it's set at "Same as source". I thought, what the hell - I tried re-encoding one of my friend's clips with a SET framerate of 23.976 and not "same as source" and that fixed the problem.

So in summary: Set framerates in Handbrake, don't rely on "same as source".

Thanks for all the replies guys

[poisondeathray]

"same as source" in handbrake often causes VFR output, which of course causes many problems with editing software and some devices

setting a value makes it CFR