,Importing movie footage from stills camera

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Mark Batey Author

Level 1

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,Importing movie footage from stills camera

Hi

Powerbook G4 17" 1.3MHz, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Apr 1, 2008 3:07 AM

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Answer 1

Mark Batey Author

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Apr 1, 2008 3:11 AM in response to Mark Batey

Sorry, accidentally hit enter there...

I've got some great footage shot on my Nikon P5100 stills camera - it's at 30fps, 640x480, in what Quicktime player says is Apple OpenDML JPEG AVI file.

I want to bring it into a PAL seqence. No problems with the re-sizing, and I can change the framerate, but then the results are looking really jittery.

I've tried a straight import of the AVI into FCP and a render on the timeline, and putting it through compressor, outputting as DV PAL - both look the same.

Any suggestions for how I might smooth out the pictures to get rid of the flickery effect?

Mark

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Answer 2

Silal

Level 5

6,461 points

Apr 1, 2008 5:47 AM in response to Mark Batey

Mark

What fps have your original movies? Probably what you mean with flicker is the difference between original fps (10?) with the PAL fps (25).

After all, the best you can do is converting them to PAL DV with QT Pro before importing. No way to *add any quality* to the original !

Hope that helps !

Alberto

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Answer 3

Mark Batey Author

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Apr 1, 2008 6:45 AM in response to Silal

Like I said, the original movies are at 30fps, and look great at that frame rate. I need to import them into a 25fps PAL project, and all my attempts to do that result in a picture quality that has an unpleasant flickering to it that is not present in the original.
I'm not trying to improve on the original, just to get the 25fps version to look a bit more like it!

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Answer 4

Studio X

Level 7

27,229 points

Apr 1, 2008 7:06 AM in response to Mark Batey

What is likely happening is FCP is throwing away 5 frames to conform the 30fps to a 25fps. You are throwing away every 6th frame and yes, it will end up looking stuttery.

You could try Compressor to do conversion. Look under advanced, as what you are doing is translating a NTSC frame rate to a PAL frame rate.

Good luck,

x

Message was edited by: Studio X

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Answer 5

Silal

Level 5

6,461 points

Apr 1, 2008 7:49 AM in response to Mark Batey

Like I said, the original movies are at 30fps

Sorry I missread the post. As X said, try using Compressor standard conversion.

Do you have to mis this material with other ral PAL? If you need to edit *just this camera footage* and delivery a PAL version, you better convert them to NTSC DV, edit in a NTSC DV timeline and then convert with Compressor just the final edit. You'll save the time of encoding a lot of source footage that probably will never use in the edit..

Hope that helps !

Alberto

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Answer 6

Mark Batey Author

Level 1

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Apr 1, 2008 8:25 AM in response to Silal

Thanks for the tips guys - Silal, the stuff needs to be mixed with standard PAL footage - I want to put some digiscoped material shot on a Nikon P5100 of birds into a news item for the BBC station I work for. None of the frame blending options in compressor or mpeg streamclip work well at dealing with converting 30fps to 25 fps.

But... I've just downloaded a demo version of the Nattress standards conversion filter, and it's a lot better. Still not perfect, but pretty usable, so I guess that's the way to go!

Cheers...

M

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Answer 7

Apr 16, 2008 3:54 AM in response to Mark Batey

I had the exact same problem: Very jittery conversion from IXUS 860 .AVI's (640 x 480 @ 30 fps) to PAL DV in FCP 6. Tried the Nattress standards conversion filter, and the first results are already usable. You loose some of the sharpness but motion is now watchable. And there's lots more parameters to tweak so the endresult can be even better. Recommended.

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