Editing in MP4 format possible?

Hello, o great LAFCPUG! You have been so brilliantly helpful in the past, and I have yet another question. I was given a bunch of quicktime clips that are MPEG-4 Video format (I think shot on a little flashed based Samsung), 1280x720p, 29.97p and I'm having trouble with them. I've never edited in MPEG-4 format before, is there a trick to it?

FCP 5.0.4, dual 1.8 PowerPC, 2 gig RAM, OS10.4.8 - nothing fancy.

I've used this system to run much higher data streams than this, but for some reason while I can look at the footage and it opens, it will not play back in from the timeline or the viewer or canvas - though it does play fine in Quicktime stand-alone. I set my sequence to the same settings as the footage and FCP says it only needs to render the audio, but I can't make it play at all. It will update when I stop playing, and I can jog through the footage with no trouble. I've set viewing to viewing all frames and done everything else I know how to do - am I missing something?

Any insight will be rewarded with generous compliments!

Thanks!

mp4 is not an editing format. you'll have to use something like mpeg streamclip to get it into something FCP can see.

Thanks! I love your shoes!

So I should convert the clips - in QT? What would be a good, lossless format where I can keep them as close to the original as possible? Would Compressor be better?

thats why i said "mpegstreamclip"

but yeah, i guess qt should export them as well...

youre going to have to choose a lossless compressor (animation, or photojpeg - each at highest quality) to get the best quality, but that means you'll have to render on the FCP timeline, but thats just the way it goes...

sorry wayne, I don't know what an mpegstreamclip is, but I'll look it up. I didn't mean exporting them to a full rez uncompressed codec, just one that would retain the quaility of the original mpeg without re-compressing, if such a thing exists.

Thanks so much for the enlightenment! Many blessings to you :-)

[www.squared5.com]

a lot of us here use it. you could use streamclips export to dv feature and it will go right into fcp. BUT you take a noticeable quality hit. i say its worth the render to shoot export lossless.

how much footage do you have? this can be a time intensive process

not much, maybe half an hour. Don't want to go down to DV if at all possible. Exporting high rez will make huge files, tho, yah? And then I won't be able to play in real time. Seems like DVCpro-HD 720p might work okay, it's just going to compress it again... Trying a batch conversion in Compressor. If you can think of any suggestions to make the compression less noticable (obviously other than going uncompressed), I'd love to know!

Thanks again so much for your help!

DVCProHD 720 via Compressor would be my suggestion. The preset default for that is 59.94 so change that to 29.97p.

- Justin Barham -

any way you go. it's NOT a mindless procedure and the processing alone will take some time. so take my advice and PRACTICE on a SHORT clip and make sure you have what you need before you commit to all of them

You can't edit in MPEG4 or MPEG2 easily because they're not really video formats in the way you think. These formats consist of one real, pure video frame followed by many bookkeeping frames and statistical analysis (which tend to compress really well). You can't edit on those bookkeeping frames.

The other thing you need to watch for is not to put a compressed and damaged format in the middle. DV format, for example, uses fuzzy color, and fuzzy color compresses well and most people don't notice the damage. You might notice.

That's why we recommend one of the uncompressed formats in the middle. That represents an undamaged intermediate step. Of course, that also means the shock of having the show suddenly take up many times more disk space.

MPEG4 and it's variations can be very aggressive compressors. As an experiment, I compressed a 90 min theatrical animated feature using H.264. It arrived at 700M of disk space and was perfectly enjoyable and watchable. The original uncompressed movie would have been 1.5 TeraBytes. That's two whole RAID5 LaCie TeraByte drive stacks--just for one movie.

Surprise!

Koz