Exporting / Render Problems - Glitches/ Dropouts/ Artifacts

I am having some render/export issues that I hope someone can help me with.

Let me explain the problem. When exporting a sequence to a quicktime file, I am getting strange video glitches that almost look like drop outs or video artifacts. There is also, occasionally an audio glitch or buzz. These only last for a very short time on screen and are always in different spots. The original sequence shows no sign of any problems and plays perfectly.

I have trashed my preferences, repaired permissions and restarted the computer. I also trashed the original render files via render manager with hope that may be the issue.

My system is a dual 2 gig G5 PPC.
Running system 10.4.11
FCP 6.0.2

Project is HDV. I have tried exporting self contained, reference and recompressed quicktimes with the same problem occurring regardless of which setting.

Any thoughts?

*Update - I am now reduced to testing a short sequence over and over again to no avail. The problem is still there. This sequence in particular has no filter on it, just a few transitions.

Thanks for any help.

do the drop outs occur over the transitions?

I noticed it on a transition once, but they also occur elsewhere.

curious... what's your render settings? are you rendering to pro res?

Rendering is set to same codec as project is being edited in - HDV.

UPDATE: I deleted all of my render files and then exported the sequences to a QT file - recompressed and self contained. I also set it to save to a different disc. All of the exported files looked great, however I had one issue while copying the largest 14 gig file to another drive. It had an ERROR -36. I tried multiple times copy it to another drive with no luck. In the end I opened it in quicktime and saved it to a different drive.

That worked well until I found a glitch in quicktime file that wasn't there in the original one? Weird.

Someone shoot me!

I have no real explanation for your difficulties (and no gun to shoot you with) but I'd guess that the problem you had trying to export 14 GB to "another drive" was due to that drive not having been formatted Mac OSX Extended. Without that, file size is limited to 2GB and Error -36 (I/O Error) would be the logical result. The one you were successful in copying to was correctly formatted. On the other hand, that error could happen if you filled the drive up, too.

Curious - why did you export "recompressed"? I've never seen anyone recommend this option and can't see where it would be advantageous for anything (more compression can't improve things). But maybe there's a good reason.

Scott

Scott - I exported recompressed because it re-renders everything. As I dumped all of my renders I felt it was a good idea.

Quote

I exported recompressed because it re-renders everything. As I dumped all of my renders I felt it was a good idea.

I don't think "recompress" means "re-render". The FCP manual says this about it:

"If the sequence settings of the selected clip or sequence match your export settings,
you can choose not to recompress any of the media during export. This avoids
generational loss due to recompression, and makes the export process faster."

I haven't found anywhere yet that says why you should recompress during export, except that:

"The Export Using QuickTime Conversion command always recompresses your
media when it exports, even if your export settings match the settings of your
selected clip or sequence."

And this is why it is always recommended that you use simple "Export QuickTime Movie" for full original quality (i.e., Conversion always compresses and thus degrades a bit, even if the settings are the same).

Not a bad idea to have dumped all your renders, it just would have been better to Render All, then Export QT Movie without recompression.

That's my take on this. Don't know if it relates to your original problem....

Scott