H.264 clips in FCP 4.5 - doable?

Hi Folks,

I started a project using 1280X720 (half HD or whatever you call it) clips PhotoJPEG compressed/30fps (mono audio/16K). They played fine. I then got a new batch of clips shot with a different camera - same image size but H.264 compressed/29.97fps (stereo audio/48K). On playback they skip frames like crazy and are unusable.

This is probably an obvious problem to yall and i apologize for my ignorance having been out of the loop for a while, but is there an update/workaround I can use to be able to play these clips other than dragging them into a sequence and recompressing them and then cutting them up back into individual clips (there are 60 clips) - or upgrading to a new version of FCP. If I need to upgrade, what is the cheapest (oldest) version I need to get?

Thanks for your help guys,

Dean Chamberlain

= G4 PPC, DP 1.25 GHz, 1.75Gb, FCP 4.5 =

> They played fine. I then got a new batch of clips shot with a different camera - same image
> size but H.264 compressed/29.97fps (stereo audio/48K). On playback they skip frames like
> crazy and are unusable.

You don't edit H.264 clips into a timeline. It's a delivery codec that drives FCP crazy. Convert it to a codec like DVCPro HD or ProRes first. Since you're using FCP4.5, DVCPro HD is pretty much your only standard HD option. I wouldn't use Photo JPEG if I were you. You can run Compressor on the individual clips, set one preset for them all, and convert all of them in one go.


www.derekmok.com

Oh man, thanks for getting back so quick! This forum rules! I'll give it a shot.

Hmmmm - I converted the H.264 files into DVC PROHD 720p using Compressor. They original clips are 1280X720 but the converted clips are 1248X702 in Quicktime viewer and when I import them into FCP they become 960X720 and look smaller both in height and width - they're letterboxed on all 4 sides. I tried encoding them with pixel aspect set to both DVC PRO 720 and to square and it doesn't make any difference. Help!!!!

thanks,

Dean


= G4 PPC, DP 1.25 GHz, 1.75Gb, FCP 4.5 =