editing with H264

A client wants me to re edit some clips that he uses on his website. He doesn't have the source footage, so the clips are only available in the following format:

H.264, 15fps, 320X240

The client wants the edit delivered in the original format.

I've found that trying to edit with these clips causes FCP to crash a lot. Is that due to the H264 compression?

I'm thinking I should convert the clips to some thing else prior to editing but I don't want to degrade the already low quality too much.

Any ideas?


FCP 5.1.4
OSX 10.4.9
G5 dual 2ghz
2 GB RAM
500GB SATA RAID

> A client wants me to re edit some clips that he uses on his website. He doesn't have the
> source footage, so the clips are only available in the following format:
> H.264, 15fps, 320X240
> The client wants the edit delivered in the original format.

Kaboom! Can't be done. Unless he gives you the footage in its original format at the original quality, all you'll be able to deliver is a pale imitation of his original quality after having been squashed to death by the H.264 codec and the 320x240 frame size. Further still, the low frame rate will also cause you problems.

> I've found that trying to edit with these clips causes FCP to crash a lot. Is that due to the
> H264 compression?

H.264 is not an editing format at all. It's a delivery format.

I'd ask the client to supply you with the original clips and project file, whoever had done the editing. But if you have to work with those clips like that, you'd have to reconvert them into something editing-friendly.

Why wouldn't your client have kept the original full-quality footage? Not smart.


www.derekmok.com

It's the same reason you can't directly edit MPEG2. Only about every sixteenth video frame is real. The ones in the middle are bookkeeping files. H.264 is much worse.

You're going to get another surprise, too. H.264 is an extraordinarily good compressor. That means when you convert that innocent-looking web animation to, say High PhotoJPEG (our choice) for editing, it could suddenlly turn into Gigs and Gigs of data. It could also take you many hours to convert it.

Plan for that.

Koz

looks like I've got no choice but to convert to an editing friendly format, and the clips are fairly short so it shouldn't be too bad. So my question is, what would be a smart format to use, knowing that I'll go back to h264 in the end? I'm used to cuttingwith DV, so I've never dealt with this before

Convert to an uncompressed format to avoid compression artifacts adding up. PhotoJPEG with the quality slider all the way up or Aniimation. I think there's another favorite people use that I don't.

Apple-something.

Koz

As far as I understand, MPEG can be reconstituted fairly wel into DV, but I don't know of anything that can devolve H.264 back into a fairly good edit.

The earlier comment about being only a delivery format is what will get us into more trouble as AVC recording, which is H.264, is coming next.

I tried converting all the clips with the exact same frame size, frame rate and audio settings but chose compressor = none. Seems to work well, but the file size much larger.

<<<but the file size much larger.>>>

Right. That's normal. The object of video compression is to take up less digital room and still make the show enjoyable to watch.

Take a deep breath and step back a second. Uncompressed video flies by at about one Meg *per frame*. Thirty frames per second.....

If your show is smaller than that, then it has been compressed, manipulated, damaged, or all three. Almost all video compression is destructive. We throw away stuff that "nobody is going to see anyway" and hope nobody notices. That's why you can't compress the daylights out of a video and then bring it back to the timelline and do more work on it. Some of the quality of the original show isn't going to be there any more.

That's why we keep insisting H.264 is a delivery medium. You can pull it back to uncompressed and do more work on it, but you may not be completely happy with the results. Keep in mind, too, that you're going to have to go back to H.264 when you're done. Double compression never looks very good.

Koz

Dang that's true! The uncompressed files looked pretty good when I was cutting with them. But when I export my edit to H.264, it has a lot of compression artifacts, including these weird black dots that obscure the frame momentarily.

> But when I export my edit to H.264, it has a lot of compression artifacts, including these
> weird black dots that obscure the frame momentarily.

I could be wrong, but I think that may be the result of going back and forth between 15fps source files, then exporting to 29.97fps for the edit.


www.derekmok.com

I kept it at 15 fps the whole time.
But I tried another method. After completing my cut, I relinked it to the original h.264 media files, exported a QT movie (not QT conversion), then used Compressor to create a new h.264 file. Seems to work.