Transcoding Problem

The FORMAT you are shooting is incompatible. 1080p60 is something FCP doesn't work with, as it is a new, and really RARE format. It is only used to shoot footage intended to be slowed down to 30fps. There is no 1080p60 deliverable...master format. 1080 is a 30 frame master format. The web doesn't do 1080p60, no tape does 1080p60...thus why FCP doesn't really work with it. The NEW FCP-X does. But the old one, FCP 7...released in 2009...does not.

You need to use CLIPWRAP2 to convert the footage.

And again, only shoot 1080p60 if you intend to slow the 60fps footage down to 30fps or 24fps, as there is no 1080p 60fps deliverable...no way to master to that format.

I'm flagging your post so the developer of ClipWrap 2 will chime in.

The camera should have the option to shoot 1080i30...or 1080p30. It doesn't ONLY shoot 1080p60.

Freezing picture might be the result of drives too slow or too full to keep up. Clip wrap is pretty spiffy.

Definitely sounds like your computer is just having trouble keeping up during playback. Try converting to a format like Apple Intermediate with Clipwrap and see if it plays better- H264 (avchd) is very CPU intensive to decode, and 60p is (obviously) twice as intensive as 30p (or 60i).

-Colin (divergent media)

First off, I would stick to a sequence in FCP that matches your source - so ProRes LT 1080p60 or whatever. If you don't match them, you're just adding a generation loss unnecessarily. Let FCP adjust the sequence settings for you, and then don't touch them.

I don't think that's your real issue though - I suspect you're up against the general crumminess of Compressor's MPEG2 encoder. You'll find all sorts of voodoo online about how to get better results - one option is to use the optical flow functionality to get better resizing - smushing HD footage down to SD can introduce all sorts of weird moire and other issues if not done "smartly." Or, if you happen to have another dvd app (like adobe encore) give that a try.

But generally, I would bet that compressor is the weak point in your chain as you describe it.

-Colin

And I wonder if there's a field dominance issue here as well...

Let me also add:

I'm a big fan of keeping the media pristine until it's absolutely necessary to stomp on it: That way there's only one place to look if the compression is bad, rather than have to chase along a chain of downrezzing and recompressions to search out the culprit.

That said, one can usually get a rather stunning DVD when starting with a 720p sequence export. Another thing you might experiment with is doing a full rez output then running the footage through compressor's advanced format conversion and making an SD file that you then compress for the dvd.

I don't have any real answers for you, and the only advice I can offer is to work with a short portion of your timeline and make small exports to do your tests with. Get a pad and pencil and take notes on your process. It'd be a b*tch to get a great conversion and not remember what you did. Good luck.

Hi,

I'm in Pal Land, but when I shoot with my little Panny STD750, I sometimes shoot 1080/50p. I convert my clips to Pro Res LT and then I have two choices in FCP, I can pop a clip onto my timeline and when it asks if I want to change my sequence to match my clip settings I click "yes" and edit in a 50fps timebase sequence. I then export and take my movie into Compressor and change the framerate to 25 when encoding.

If I want to edit in a 25fps sequence, I create a new sequence and go to sequence settings and set /aspect ratio to "HDTV 1080i (16:9)" Pixel aspect ratio "square", Field dominance "none", Editing Timebase "25" and compressor "Apple pro res LT" I can then edit in a 25fps sequence. FCP just drops every other frame.

Either way is ok for me.

Hope this makes sense.

DM