Outputting HDDV

First let me say I am a professional editor with 26 years experience. I have been working with FCP and DVD Studio Pro for three years. I have created DVDs from countless FCP projects.

I am working with HDDV for the first time, it is actually my son's school project, a 30 minute film. I am having all kinds of problems outputting a cut for "rough cut" approval.

Since it is a rough cut, I first wanted to output via Print to Tape to Regular NTSC DV. After a lengthy process time, FCP failed to output and gave me a message that some files were in use by another program. They were not.

I then tried to do a Quicktime Conversion to NTSC DV with the aspect set to 16:9. After a long processing time FCP suddenly quit, leaving me with nothing. Next I tried to output the sequence as a self contained quicktime movie, this one at the same resolution as the timeline which is I belive 108060i. Again, long process that ended in FCP suddenly qutting and no file.

Next I used compressor to create an AAC and MPEG2. Compressor did not quit, and seemed to finish the three hour process. However there was only the AAC file to be found, and an extensive search found no evidence of the MPEG2 file anywhere on any drive.

My next plan was to change the timeline to full quality playback and render it in sections, one minute of the film at a time. I have not previously rendered the project as it is still a rough cut and very fluid, however at this point rendering seems to be the only answer. My thought in rendering it section by section is to eliminate the 3 hours process and crash scenario. In addition, by rendering it section by section I will be able to identify if there is a bad file or section of the film that creates the crashes.

After Rendering the entire film, I planned to do a self contained Quicktime output. My thought was to again do this in one minute blocks. After doing this, I would import the 30 plus blocks, put them in order in a new timeline, and again try to output to DV or DVD.

Please share your thoughts and experiences on this subject. Dad the professional editor cannot let his son down!

Thank you,

Jim Furlong



I use a Mac because I am addicted to elegance.

I should add that I did successfully create an MPEG2 from a three second test clip of the film. I brought this into DVD Studio Pro as a 16:9 burned a DVD just to make sure, and it played swimmingly on my television.

So the process does work, that is why I am thinking of the segmented outputs to identify any trouble areas.



I use a Mac because I am addicted to elegance.

It sounds like you are hitting a bump somewhere and getting derailed. It could be a corrupt sequence, so try copying the clips from the entire sequence and pasting it into a new sequence. Then try rendering - maybe in five minute lots rather than 1 minute lots.. that sounds like a nightmare!

Also, check that you don't have any stills in the project that are greyscale or CMYK, and make sure there are no files or folders that have a '/' in the name, or start with a '-'.

BTW - 'conforming' HDV for output is known to be a very very lengthy process. I have heard of 9 hour renders for 30 minute projects, so don't think that because it's taking a long time that there's something really wrong. Of course, crashing does mean something's wrong

What are your hardware specs? Where is the media? Where are the render files? Where is the project file? Have you backed up your project file yet?

Sorry that I did not post my equipment specs. I have to admit that I copied the post from my original on the Apple Discussion boards, where the system information is listed outside of the message text. Therefore I ommitted that important information.

G5 Dual 2.3 4Gig RAM OS 10.4.6 Final Cut Studio ver 5.0

I have now solved the problem, so this post is to share the information.

When I tried to render chunks of the timeline, it worked until I hit a failure. The bad part about the failures were that you did not get a partial render for the time spent, it stopped without doing anything. So what I did was render in chunks until a failure. I then started rendering scene by scene within the infected chunk until the corrupted scene was identified.

At this point I tried to render the rest of the sequence, which proved optomistic, and a waste of an hour as it ended in failure, indicating a second corrupt file. Again small chunks and indiviual scene renders identified the other corrupt file.

I then did a new capture of the material for the two scenes. I did not want to remove the media and batch capture. I have had "slippage" of a frame or two on batch capture in the past, so I like to have a visual as well as timecode reference for replacing scenes.

I cut the new capture onto V2, with the corrupt scene on V1. Compared visuals to assure a match, copied color correction information from V1 to V2 clip, and then dropped V2 down to V1 rendered the scene and output seamlessly.

In closing I will say as usual the good suggestions came from LAFCPUG not the Apple discussion boards. I liked the suggestion of creating a new sequence and doing a copy paste of the material from the sequence in question, good thought.

Thank you LAFCPUG, you are an outstanding resource.

Jim Furlong



I use a Mac because I am addicted to elegance.