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Helpful articles for Final Cut Pro for Mac, Final Cut Pro for iPad and Final Cut Camera:
Long shot posting here to see if anyone knows about this, but I thought I would try. I have old Mini DV videotapes I am transferring in using the mini DV cable via a Canopus ADVC100. It looks pretty good, but on fast moving motion, the video displays a kind of double ghost image and I'm wondering why. This is not interlace combing, but a ghost image, as below.
Anyone have any idea how to avoid this?
Mac Studio (2023)
Yes, the last time I tested this QuickTime Player imports DV deinterlaced as mean/blend and depending on the settings it imports PAL as 585x480 AVC_AAC (option High) or 702x576 ProRes_PCM (option Maximum).
Final Cut Pro 10.7 imports 720x576 25 fps bottom field first interlaced, overall 30.5 Mb/s, timecode .mov (DV, 16 bit 48.0 kHz 1536 kb/s PCM Little / Signed) from my D8 PAL camcorder (4:3). My old .dv files archived from iMovie 1.0.2-6.0.3 are essentially the same except .dv, overall 28.8 Mb/s, no timecode and PCM Big / Signed.
So I'd recommend FCP import for the quality I am used to.
Set Final Cut Pro Pro project as PAL SD, 720x576 25i (or 50p if you want to bob deinterlace to double frame rate preserving both fields although ffmpeg has better quality options for that with bwdif=1 bob deinterlacing filter in my experience). FCP should then automatically export it as 768x576 (rectangular .dv pixels converted to square pixels. Or in ffmpeg scale 720x576 to 788x576 and crop to 768x576). Optionally you might fiddle with FCP interlacing settings.
DV import to Sonoma still works - Apple Community
Transfer Mini DV footage - Apple Community
The ADVC110 has a bunch of Dip Switches on the bottom of the unit so it can be configured to match the incoming tape footage.
Double check it is set to match your tape.
Al
Alchroma wrote:
The ADVC110 has a bunch of Dip Switches on the bottom of the unit so it can be configured to match the incoming tape footage.
Double check it is set to match your tape.
Al
Great suggestion as I had forgot about those switches. As it happens they were set correctly for PAL tapes. Tried changing some of the switches anyway, but it did not help. Also tried inputting via analogue SVHS cable. No better. Good clear image most of the time, but fast movement gives me this double image. Here are the dip switches
And here is a sample of the same transfer where the big balloons are nice and sharp, but the man walking in the foreground has a double image, so not everything gets a double image, just fast movement.
Have you tried to view the movie with those different VLC deinterlacing options (see above)? If you set Deinterlace OFF you should see interlacing lines in moving objects like in the screenshot below. If not, then the capturing device has already permanently deinterlaced it as Mean/Blend mode progressive.
QuickTime uses such Mean/Blend display mode (the old QuickTime 7 Player allowed different interlace display modes).
Okay, I seem to have solved the whole problem in a way I did not expect. Importing using Quicktime is the culprit. Not the hardware or cables. If I import using Final Cut Pro, I don't get the ghosting. No idea why QT is doing this or how to fix it using QT. The problem with importing with FCP, however, is that it wants to break every single shot into a different file and with shaky camera movement, it seems to make loads of different files even though they are, in fact, the same shot. So is there an app for importing video which does it as one long file and does not create the ghosting QT does?
Also, an odd thing. The file is PAL, so it's 720x576 25i. I created a project in FCP which is the same pixel dimensions, but when I output, I get black bands top and bottom, as pictured. Why am I outputting a different frame size? It shouldn't have any black bands.
Cartoonguy wrote:
I set up a project as above in FCP, but now I am back to getting black bars on top and bottom, as pictured previously. Otherwise, the output looks good. Baffled as to why there are black bars when the settings for the clip and project are 768x576.
Is there a way to import with FCP without it making loads of tiny clips? I can't see any setting to turn that off? If not, is there another application for importing video? Still don't know why QT import does such a terrible job for this input material.
I shot my old .dv movies with 4:3. But for fun I shot the very last tape as 16:9 before retiring the camcorder many years ago. 16:9 uses the same sensor by just cropping so the effective resolution is clearly worse than in 4:3. Both are saved as 720x576 but just scaled differently and tagged in the metadata so for that for 16:9 .dv MediaInfo and Invisor display:
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
In the old QuickTime Player 7 Pro and in MPEG Streamclip it was possible to change losslessly that .dv metadata tag between 4:3 and 16:9 when some iMovie version tagged it incorrectly via a certain workflow.
Anyways, I now digged such old 16:9 .dv file and FCP 11.0 respects that 16:9 tag and automatically puts those black bars to such footage. It seems you can force it to 4:3 by setting Anamorphic Override to Standard so try that:
iMovie HD 6 had a setting NOT to start a new clip at scene break. I used it when some bad tape had lots of dropped frames causing the import broken down to multiple very short clips.
One option might be to get an old Mac with built-in Firewire and use old iMovie 1-6 for the import.
Regarding old tape of any sort that has been sitting for years:
It's wise to run the tape in Fast Forward to the end, then Fast Rewind back to the start.
Also good to check the player heads and tape path are working correctly.
Al
Yes, Quicktime. It's captured as ProRes 422. 702x576. 25p. PAL video. I am playing this on my Mac in Canada, but I don't think that Pal should make a difference on a computer.
When I play it back on the original camcorder, it appears to not display this ghosting problem, although I am looking at the tiny flip out screen so it's hard to be sure.
Al's suggestion that the switches may not be set correctly is a possibility.
I have a similar converter but more recently (16 years ago?) got a Canon with a pass-through facility and was able to simply connect the camera by Firewire and capture directly.
I always felt this latter method gave a tad more quality with fewer dropouts.
BenB wrote:
You're capturing interlaced footage as progressive, don't.
Can you please explain how I can choose to capture as interlace? I don't see any option in Quicktime. I just hit the record button and it starts recording.
Thank you, Matti. I made a new project set as you suggested and I lost the black bars, so that's good. I did not see any option to change the frame rate to 50, but when I put the clip on the timeline and choose to "deinterlace", it changes it to 50, so I guess that's what you meant.
In FCP, it plays perfectly. Nice and smooth. No double image and no interlace combing. When I export it, however, it looks all interlaced. So what am I doing wrong such that the export looks bad?
And the other question is, while I get much better results importing via FCP, it does chop the video into dozens of little clips, which I do not want. It also seems to drop a few frames between them. QT doesn't do this, but it gives me those double images, so what can I use to import which will give me a clean result and one single clip?
Thanks!
Try this: Preserve both fields and double PAL .dv frame rate to 50fps i.e. bob deinterlace via FCP 11.0:
File > New... > Project > Custom > Resolution: 768x576, Rate: 50p, Color Space: Standard - Rec. 601 (PAL).
Window > Show in Workspace > Inspector [cmd-4] > "i" [at upper right] > Basic to Settings [at lower right] > Field Dominance Override [at upper right] > Lower First/Off (Deinterlace OFF/ON does not seem to make any difference here).
File > Share > HEVC - High Efficiency Video..., Settings > Format: Computer/Apple Devices, Video Codec: HEVC 10/8-bit [768x576 | 50fps].
Or with somewhat better deinterlacing quality with ffmpeg with 4:3 PAL input:
ffmpeg -i input.dv -vf bwdif=1,scale=788:576,crop=768:576:10:0,setsar=sar=1/1 -c:v libx265 -crf 24 -preset medium -pix_fmt yuv420p10le -profile:v main10 -color_range 1 -color_primaries:v bt470bg -color_trc:v bt709 -colorspace:v smpte170m -timecode 00:00:00:00 -tag:v hvc1 -c:a aac_at -b:a 128k PAL_dv_libx265_to_10bit_limited_5-1-6.mp4
Or with faster HW encoding but with less fine-grained output quality options:
ffmpeg -i input.dv -vf bwdif=1,scale=788:576,crop=768:576:10:0,setsar=sar=1/1 -c:v hevc_videotoolbox -b:v 5500K -pix_fmt p010le -profile:v main10 -color_range 1 -color_primaries:v bt470bg -color_trc:v bt709 -colorspace:v smpte170m -timecode 00:00:00:00 -tag:v hvc1 -c:a aac_at -b:a 128k PAL_dv_hevc_videotoolbox_to_10bit_limited_5-1-6.mp4
I set up a project as above in FCP, but now I am back to getting black bars on top and bottom, as pictured previously. Otherwise, the output looks good. Baffled as to why there are black bars when the settings for the clip and project are 768x576.
Is there a way to import with FCP without it making loads of tiny clips? I can't see any setting to turn that off? If not, is there another application for importing video? Still don't know why QT import does such a terrible job for this input material.
Looks the same as interlaced footage displayed in VLC's mean/blend mode (iMovie tutorial .dv screenshot).
What is this pic from? QT? FCP browser? What are the complete media specs of the captured file?
Transfer from Mini DV video camera has ghosting
