Final cut pro glitches

[artygirl1988]

Hi there,

I was wondering if you could help me? I'm editing dvd footage in H264 format.

When watching playback during the editing process, a slight flash frame appears at the cut points. I'm not sure why.

Also, when I attempt to put 2 clips from the same original footage together, it causes final cut pro to freeze.

If anyone can shed any light on this, I'd really appreciate it!

Thank you

 

[cpcarrot]

The obvious issue is that you shouldn’t be trying to edit footage in H264 format as it’s not a very good format for editing. The “flashes” you are seeing are likely as a result of using that codex and it struggling to cope around the edit points.

Basically why is it in H264, and does it need to be?

 

[artygirl1988]

Hi, thanks for your reply.

It's in H264 for various reasons and needs to remain that way. Have you heard of any solutions to this problem? From what you've said it seems to be a problem with the codec.

 

[cpcarrot]

Yes it’s a bit of an issue as H264 does not like being chopped up and have bits of it moved around. If you are editing in Final Cut Pro you can kind of get round the issue (kind of) by placing compression markers at the in point of each edit. It will still give you grief while in Final Cut Pro but when you export via compressor your final video file (whatever format that may be) should look fine and not have any of those “flashes”.

If your doing it in Final Cut Express then I’m afraid I can’t think of anything (don’t have it but I’m guessing it doesn’t have compression markers) other than to suggest that you really should be using an editing intermediate codex (and this holds true for Pro as well – transferring the DVD footage to ProRes or AIC would make thinks a lot smoother).