FCPX not importing audio track from DV files.

Hi Brian,

I solve the problem by just using FinalCutExpress.

However, I did try converting using Quicktime Pro 7 - and I should say "I did lose quality".

We thought there was no quality loss and it's true, the conversion is very fast. But I just happened to have some footage that was low light, badly colored and was in the kitchen where there are stoves & buttons & objects like this with lovely sharp lines. I would not have normally noticed but concentrating on the knobs on the oven, I noticed that my DV streamed/converted clip was most definitely softer. I played them using QuickView and timed it so I could flick between the original & the DV converted quickly. I'm not that fussy, but it was noticeable. If it's really of interest to anyone, I can redo it & post the clips.

Just for a laugh, I used iMovie just now to import some video from my camera.

Then I went to FCPX and did an import from iMovie.

I believe it imported them, but I don't really know, as FCPX now crashes on startup everytime - such that I can no longer do anything with FCPX - I've tried restarting about 30 times just now... and it's not looking good.

*UPDATE Deleting "~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.FinalCut.plist" fixes the restart, but it still crashes whenever I click on the imported event.

furrytoes,

I did some experimenting...

I took original DV, selected a specific frame and exported the frame as a TIFF. I also did this for my exports using QT Pro and MPEG Streamclip.

Using the command-line diff it says the files differ.

But if I use quickview and cursor up/down between them, I do not notice any difference at all in sharpness.

You may want to try exporting frames to compare your footage better.

You can also play two or more videos simultaneously with QuickTime X. Just press space bar on the faster one to pause/play to manually sync them up. I watched one I did that has low light and didn't see any differences.

I will say that my footage is not very good quality to begin with so maybe it is more noticeable on higher quality.

Brian

Hey thanks umbasa! After grousing around for a few days about spending another $50, I grew up and remembered I'd have paid $350 for FCPX if that is what it'd been. So I converted all 30+ events with compressor and it worked just like you said. It did take a while and making sure not to make mistakes is a pain...

I am looking at umbasa's method now instead. I don't really see any real degradation in quality and the bonus is it uses less disk space. If you uncheck multi-pass then it converts significantly faster. I am not sure of the quality impact but possibly may end up with slightly larger file sizes as opposed to multi-pass. On my system, with multi-pass unchecked, I get encoding at around 2x realtime.

Yes, I should use your method of viewing in Quicktime & cursor up/down.

I say this because I did another "Save" in QuickTime7 (as I wanted to simply "trim" a video). That is, I just cut the last 2 seconds out of a video using Quicktime7 Pro, "Trim to Selection" and saving (ie not export).

Using Viewer on the Mac, the trimmed video looks much sharper than the original (really obvious, even to an idiot like me)) - so there's something going on with what Viewer is doing & it obviously can't be trusted for side by side comparison.

I figured a few more things out.

In my Sony Digital 8 camcorder, there is an audio setting that I can set to 12-bit or 16-bit. I set it to 16-bit and now and analog 8mm tape played on it imports into iMovie with 48kHz audio. (12-bit was only 32kHz). As a result of changing to 16-bit the imported iMovie .dv file now works fine in FCPX and I hear the audio. I have not had a chance to try digital captures such as Digital 8 or MiniDV from my other camcorders since there is no need - FCPX can import these with no problem. It is also noteworthy to point out that A/V input from an external source like VHS that is run through my Digital 8 camcorder also gets its audio encoded at 48kHz when captured with iMovie now that I havae changed this setting.

I have done frame exports using MPEG StreamClip and determined that if I save as DV the resulting video is unchanged. If I export as DV then the video is altered a bit (although I still cannot see a difference). How I came to this conclusion is as follows: I use the command-line diff command to compare JPEG exports of first frame of original captured .dv and the saved-as .dv. Now I am pretty confident that if I import using 16-bit audio, then trim in MPEG Streamclip and save as DV instead of export, my exported files should be the same quality as the original and I won't lose anything in quality. The reason I want to trim is because capturing from Analog you get junk at the beginning of capture and sometimes I am not there to shut off right away and could record an extra half hour or hour of video. Also most tapes have different footage on it from different days/months/years and capturing analog it does not know this.

used iMovie just now to import some video from my camera.

Then I went to FCPX and did an import from iMovie. I believe it imported them, but I don't really know, as FCPX now crashes on startup everytime

I'd just like to mention, that the update fixed this crashing. I can now import from my camera into iMovie.

And from FCPX I can then "import from iMovie" and it works. And the event can be seen and it comes with audio and I can hear it.

There is still one issue where it shows in iMovie with the right 16:9 ratio, but in FCPX it shows with the wrong ratio - which is a seprate issue I'll have to figure out in another thread - but it doesn't crash, which is something.

Ya, I thought the 10.0.1 update fixed the audio import issue - I wasn't sure since I have already converted most of them and didn't feel like re-ripping something right now.

This may be of interest to some... I purchased a program called "Live Capture Plus". It has better capture from DV tape than iMovie and FCPX. It is fairly expensive at $99 but I think it is worth it because I could not find anything else like it for OSX. It allows much better control at capturing DV. I had an issue where some bad tapes or bad timecode or something which caused iMovie and FCPX to go crazy - would capture dozens, or even hundres of files (starts a new capture when it sees a glitch as a timecode change) and it was frustrating. Playing back on the video camera itself it looked perfect - no glitches. First I tried Live Capture Plus to retry on errors and it couldn't fix although it would try a few times by rewinding the tape repeatedly trying to read. Then I told to ignore errors and put all in one file but the resulting capture had "skips" and missing parts like a fraction of a second in it where the errors occured.I finally set it to ignore the timecode and it captures these problem tapes perfectly (except there is no timecode metadata for FCPX but I can live with that - just like an Analog capture). The DV .MOV files it makes import fine into FCPX (although ironically the raw DV file format doesn't and has to be processed through MPEG Streamclip to get sound so I don't bother using that way - FCPX saves DV as .MOV anyways).

I'm about half way through capturing and making digital master of all my videos. After that I hope I won't have to see another videotape again!!! 😉

How about using Quicktime Player or MPEG Streamclip to export the audio from the .dv file as an .aiff, then importing that into FCPX, slapping it underneath the silent video track, and maybe making the two of them into a compund clip to keep things nice and tidy? No problems with re-encoding the video in this scenario. Just a thought. I tried this and it seems to work for me.