Getting frame jump cutting back from still to video underneath. Any help much appreciated.

I'm using FCP7 and have video on track 1 of my timeline and am putting still images on track 2. During playback, when the playhead goes over the cut between the still image and back to the video underneath, there is a slight jump, i.e. I have a 2 second pic in the middle of the a 10 sec video clip. When the pic ends and it cuts back to the video underneath, there is a slight "stutter step."

Everything is rendered.

NOTE: My friend's workaround was to have me add an anti-alias filter to the video then go in and set that to 0 so it doesn't have any effect, but forces the clip to re-render. This seems to work but there has to be a better way...right?

Any helps is *greatly* appreciated!

Thanks!

Eric

I don't know what is causing the problem, but if a re-render fixes it there are a lot easier ways to force that. Control B will toggle clip visabilty and force a render.

What codec are your source clips and timeline? As a guess if either is long GOP you may be seeing jumps caused by out of order i frames.

VP,

First off, I want to say *thank you* for taking the time to help. It's sincerely appreciated.

As for codec, the source clips are h.264, Linear PCM. When I first imported, FCP asked if I wanted settings to match clips. I said yes. And, according to FCP, my QT vid settings under Sequence Settings are also h.264.

And just to show you how much of a novice I am, VP, I have no idea what GOP means.

Thanks again!

Eric

You can't edit H.264 clips directly in FCP7. You'll get a lot of problems. Convert everything to ProRes first.


www.derekmok.com

Derek offers great advice. To expand a bit. The process of video editing depends on being able to choose any frame and attach it to any frame of an adjacent clip. To do this it is best if the video is encoded in a codec (short for compressor/decompressor) that treats each frame as an individual still image.

h.264 is a member of a class of codecs that use compression techniques that reference other frames. Briefly, the way this works is the first frame of a clip (the I frame) is compressed as if it were a still image. Then the following frames are compared to that keyframe and if there are any differences between the two, only the changes are recorded. This continues for each frame in order till the next cut to a different scene. These then are a 'group of pictures'. Long GOP codecs are those where there maybe up to several seconds between I frames.

Trying to edit these codecs is very difficult. First, in order to find the frame to edit, and entire GOP must be decoded. Then, after the edit a new and different GOP must be calculated. Final Cut 7 is not really good at this. As you have seen it is possible, but glitchy. It would be best to take your h.264 footage and transcode it (or make a new copy) in a frame bound coded. The one that most of use use with Final Cut is ProRes, tho there are others that will work as well.

-Vance

Derek & Vance,

Thank you both for not only taking the time to respond but for your very helpful replies.

Very appreciated!

Best,

Eric

Yes go pro res. Also sometimes that little jump happens during playback but it might not be there when you export. Try to export the section where it jumps and view it in quicktime.