Playback Troubles (followup)

DELPHINUS: I am stripping video off of a number of DVDs (authorized) which were shot with what looks like an HDV camera. I am using MPEG Streamclip, which works like a charm. In my MPEG Streamclip settings, I am using 640x480 and H.264, Best Quality, and all are converting fine. However, when I import a 1 hour clip into a standard non-HD FCP project, the render time is up to 4 days. I've never seen this before. Any ideas on how to reduce render time? Should I be stripping them differently from the DVDs?

YOUR RESPONSE: Yick. Converting to before editing H.264 is a terrible, terrible idea.

You should use Streamclip to convert to a lightweight intermediate format, like 8-bit uncompressed or ProRes. Also, you shouldn't scale anything in Streamclip; leave it all 720x480. Make sure your field dominance is set to "lower" if your DVDs are 29.97. Do your cut in Final Cut using the intermediate format of your choice (FCP 6 will prompt you to automatically convert your timeline settings to match your footage, if you choose), then export a Quicktime movie. Take that into Compressor, and let it encode to your delivery format.

DELPHINUS: I used all the settings you gave me in stripping our video from a DVD and while the conversion is much quicker and the clips load into FCP with no render line, when I play the clips, they freeze up ... all of them. This usually happens when I bring in a clip different than the project setting and FCP asks me if I want to convert. Here, there is no notice from FCP that the clips don't match the timeline ...they just play for about five seconds then freeze.
Here are my MPEGStreamclip settings

8-bit uncompressed
"Best" on bar
720x480 DV
Field dominance: lower

Everything looks like it should work, but it doesn't. Any ideas?

> I used all the settings you gave me in stripping our video from a DVD and while the conversion is
> much quicker and the clips load into FCP with no render line, when I play the clips, they freeze
> up

What kind of media drive are you using? My guess is that it's not fast enough for Uncompressed SD. And make sure you're not trying to extract one single hour-long clip; break the DVD into sections.


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