Zooming and borders + different formats on YouTube

Hello!

My first question has to do with preserving borders... There is a small black border to the left and right of my video clips in Final Cut (probably because I set it up wrong), but I am living with it My problem now is that I have one clip where I zoom in... and so that destroys the black vertical borders. I tried using the Crop settings inside of Motion... however, because the clip is moving (zooming in and out with motion), the crop / border also changes for this one clip. Is there any easy way to set a border or crop, which is not affected by motion (zoom)?


My second question... I shot some footage on a flip camera and some on a Canon 5D Mark II. When exporting them, they look great in Quicktime... but when uploading to YouTube, the footage from the Canon 5D Mark II looks super lo-fi! It looks more grainy / bad than the stuff shot on the Flip!! Should I try "deinterlacing" video or what do you guys think? Is there a recommended export setting to make this not happen? It seems like something with how it is interfacing with YouTube as the footage looks great in QuickTime.

As always, thank you so much for your help and time Final Cut and editing genius gurus!

Cheers,
Matt

"There is a small black border to the left and right of my video clips in Final Cut (probably because I set it up wrong), but I am living with it "

that is so wrong.
you are just making things harder for yourself as at SOME point you may need to go back and fix that.
addressing the issue sooner rather than later is the rule with this sort of thing.

as for the border issue, you need to create another set of borders.
quickest way to do it is to add a couple of slugs above the clip and crop them down to match.


nick

The border is probably a symptom of something else anyway. My advice is the same as Nick's. Start from scratch and get a knowledgeable editor to show you how to check settings and set things up properly. Your bad compression may well be caused by your improper settings.


www.derekmok.com

Quote
Nick Meyers
as for the border issue, you need to create another set of borders.
quickest way to do it is to add a couple of slugs above the clip and crop them down to match.

I find that method doesn't work in general. After applying various Motion tab effects to a clip, I then put a cropped slug over it. (Black slug cropped almost completely from one side.) With Modify>Composite Mode>Multiply this slug does apply a black edge along the other side of the clip. But it also changes the distortions applied to the clip.

Matt needs to make a proper matte, black on the edges and white in the middle, lay it above the edit, and Modify>Composite Mode>Multiply it. One way to make this matte is to start with black slug, make it negative, and then crop it from left and right. But this slug-matte must then be exported and reimported to avoid the effects interferences mentioned above. Export a very short one. Sequence nesting doesn't do it.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

no composite modes needed, Dennis.
just 2 slugs cropped to size, or even moved into place.

my personal preference is to create a mask in Photoshop,
but i thought i'd keep this simple.


nick

misposted

Nick: You're so right. Thanks for the tip.

----------------

Whenever image tracks are stacked there is some composite mode in action. The default mode is "Normal". In this example of masking an edge with a shifted or cropped black slug, both "Normal" mode and "Multiply" mode achieve the masking, but "Multiply" interferes with the Motion tab effects applied to the clip beneath. It's one more bug in FCP7. Composite modes should only involve how the tones and colors of one track combine with the tones and colors of another track, pixel-by-pixel. There should be no influencing the geometry. Further experimenting showed that the bug affects other composite modes besides "Multiply" and can occur when neither track is a slug. In various composite modes, Motion tab effects applied to one clip can interfere with Motion tab effects applied to the other clip. Sigh!

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

there's a bunch of little thing i wish had been fixed along the way that are now never going to be.
sigh, indeed.

also, here's another tip re a DIY FCP-mask.

you can set one up simply using a couple of slugs (which at 2 tracks is clumsy), or Derek's method of a slug with a mask filter applied (which is not great for RT)
then in the timeline, turn of the clips underneath,
and export with quicktime conversion a as still image TIFF w millions of colours+,
and you will get a single image file you can re-import and use with god RT performance.

it's a bit like using FCP as Photoshop.


nick

Quote
Nick Meyers
there's a bunch of little thing i wish had been fixed along the way that are now never going to be.

N'th generation software has the advantage of being well tried, but also the disadvantge that as the code gets thick, adding a little feature likely interferes with an earlier programmer's trick.

FCP X was announced as freshly written code. Then the FCP 7 boo-boos should all be missing from FCP X. I'm thinking of really ugly errors like miscalculating gamma correction.
Has FCP X been verified to be fresh? Did FCP X's new coders know video technology and were they careful?

Sorry if this has drifted off topic.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

Thanks all as always for your in-depth help.

I started at the top and tried Nick's 2 slug trick, which worked great for maintaining borders on the zooming clips! I just moved 2 slugs into place. Thank you! !

On the compression... again, I shot three different kinds of formats. I shot with a toy camera, Vidster... a Flip camera... and a Canon 5D MarkII. I used mpeg stream clip to convert all the formats to Apple Pro Res 422 HQ. A professional editor friend told me to convert everything to Pro Res 422... I already edited this 20 minute long piece, so not looking forward too much to starting from scratch (and hope that is unnecessary). My editor friend said Pro Res 422 is good, but I probably didn't need to convert everything to Pro Res 422HQ... alas.

All of the footage that I edited in this session -- all of the clips Format reads -- Vid Rate 30 fps / Frame Size 720 X 480 / Pixel Aspect NTSC -- CCIR / Compressor Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) / Lower Field Dominance -- All of the clips, both shot on the Canon and the low quality cameras all have this same Format through my conversion in Mpeg Streamclip before I started editing.

My Settings in my Sequence are the same -- Frame Size 720X480 NTSC DV 3:2 / Pixel Aspect NTSC -- CCIR / Lower (even) field dominance / editing time base 30... however my compressor is DV/DVCPRO - NTSC... should that have been set to Apple Pro Res (HQ) as my clips are too? I tried changing the compressor to Pro Res HQ in my sequence and everything went green... should I re-render everything as Apple Pro Res HQ or keep it DV/DVCPRO - NTSC?

The other place I might have messed up with my settings -- when I export using quicktime conversion... it says my current dimensions are 640X480... when I change that to 720X480, it says that is 4:3... while my frame size in my sequence says it is DV 3:2... Also, I was using the H.264 compressor on export.

When I exported before, everything looked fine in quicktime (other than that border problem Nick and you guys just helped me fix)... but once uploading to YouTube... the footage shot on the Canon 5D MKII just looked AWFUL. I'm sure I have something wrong with compressor or dimension settings. Any help here on final sequence or export settings would be hugely helpful.

I am forever indebted to this rad forum. Hope you guys are well and editing some cool work.

On progress -- I just changed my sequence settings to Apple Pro Res 422 HQ and rendered (border is still there)... I'm assuming that maybe I shot in 640X480 on all these different cameras and so Mpeg StreamClip created the border when I told it to make my files 720X480?

I will try different export compressors and export just small clips of the Canon footage and upload them to youtube to see if I can't solve the problem on my end before you guys respond

Thanks again!

> the footage shot on the Canon 5D MKII just looked AWFUL.

Well, your formats are all over the place. Editing in Standard Def pretty much puts your resolution through the meat grinder, and you're also working in DV NTSC, possibly the weakest of all the editable SD codecs.

From what I'm seeing above, you don't have a specific setting problem. You have a global problem -- did you plan the shoot? Did you consult an editor before plowing ahead? The Flip camera (at least, some models) and the Canon 5DmkII are both capable of shooting HD -- why didn't you shoot HD? Do you have so much Vidster footage that you had to compromise everything else just to make sure that particular batch didn't look too terrible? Did you consider using the Vidster footage at a reduced size so that it doesn't have to fill an HD frame? I can't imagine that you had a Canon 5DmkII and a Flip camera on the same shoot and used the Flip more than the 5D. What is the intended creative effect? If you knew you were going to SD, did you do the 5D conversion properly? Most of the formats shot by the 5D are 16:9 HD. Did you remember to use crop or pan-and-scan on the footage? Because if you just export 1920x1080 or 1280x720 to 720x480, everything will be distorted, as if it were anamorphic DV. Theoretically speaking, except for the frame-rate issue, you should retain the 5D footage's HD frame size, even if you're editing in SD, just so you can have more flexibility in reframing.


www.derekmok.com

Yes Derek... It is two cameras Flip (NON HD FLIP) and Vidster inner cut. I went back and shot the Canon 5D MKII on a steadicam to get a different look and feel... I did not shoot the 5d in HD or in 16:9... I purposefully chose to shoot in the lower res non-hd 640X480 or 720X480? The Canon has the same aspect ratio as the other footage in this setting... The video is not meant to be high-fidelity. It is an art film and I like the pixelation of the Vidster and Flip formats.

Again, the quicktime bounces I have done look great to me. The film looks as intended both in Final Cut and in the QuickTime bounce (with no borders in QuickTime on the bounce, only borders in Final Cut when set as 720X480 3:2 export) The problem is that once uploading to YouTube, the 5d footage is the one that looks different... it gets put through the meat grinder as you would say... I believe this is a compression issue. As we speak, I'm uploading a test with sequence settings being 422 HQ (same as clips), and export compressor as Pro Res 422 (HQ) as well. I'll report back and let you know if this fixes the problem.

Any helpful insight on compression settings for YouTube would be very helpful.

to further clarify... in Final Cut and in the QuickTime bounces, the 5d footage looks higher quality than the Flip or Vidster (obviously and intended), but once uploading to YouTube, both the Flip and Vidster retain their quality, but the 5d footage looks lower resolution than the Vidster almost! ! Also, besides compression settings -- could this have anything to do with interlacing or de-interlacing video on export?

Thanks again so much all.

Just tried the bounce with everything at Apple Pro Res HQ and I'm having the same issue. If you're interested in seeing a small clip --



The footage at the beginning is cutting between Vidster and Flip... at 4 seconds, the 5D MKII comes in. In Final Cut and in my QuickTime bounces, the footage at 4 seconds there (the Canon Footage) is much more high definition than the other clips (as it should be)... but for some reason, once on YouTube, that footage looks lower resolution than Vidster! To even further clarify, the 5d Footage is from 4 seconds to 14 seconds... The tree with the shadow. Right immediately before and after the 10 second long 5d clip is Vidster footage... which looks more high definition than the Canon! The Vidster and the Flip footage looks exactly as it should (exactly as it does in Final Cut and on export), but so why does only the 5d footage get so jerked around upon upload to YouTube?

Thanks again so much for your thoughts.

> Also, besides compression settings -- could this have anything to do with interlacing or de-interlacing video on export?

You said you were on 30fps. If I remember correctly, the 5DmkII doesn't shoot 29.97fps interlaced -- only 30p progressive. If you're taking progressive footage, putting it into an interlaced timeline, and then exporting with de-interlace...

Exactly what compression settings are you using at the end?


www.derekmok.com

Thanks Derek -- the last export I tried was Moving settings: Compression: Apple Pro Res 422 (HQ) / Quality: High / Frame Rate: 30 / Automatic Gamma Correction / Progressive / Dimensions: 720X480 (640X480)

On export: I did not select "De-Interlace Source Video" in Movie Settings > Size though... also on export, in the Apple ProRes HQ compressor, there is an option to check "Interlaced" in Movie Settings > Settings. I had left that box unchecked.

I will try an export with "de-interlace" selected in Movie Settings > "Size", but keep the "interlace" box on export compressor unchecked? I will try an export both ways and upload both to YouTube for further tests. Thanks for guiding my direction, Derek. Also, how do I know if my Sequence settings / Timeline is interlaced or not?

Thank you again so much, editing master(s).

Hmm... no luck. I tried De-Interlace in Movie Settings > Size





and then tried De-Interlace in Movie Settings > Size + Interlace in Movie Settings > Settings





This didn't fix the problem. The 5d footage still looks nice and high quality in Final Cut and in the QuickTime exports (even when I blow the QuickTime movie exports up HUGE)... but it still looks awful on YouTube... degraded worse than the Vidster footage (which looks the same on YouTube and QuickTime)...

Maybe this is some problem with YouTube? Or maybe there is something else that I'm missing...

The 5d footage for lack of a better word is blurry upon its upload to YouTube... In Final Cut and in the QuickTime Movies, the 5d footage is much clearer that the Vidster footage... it is sharp looking. The lines of things are very defined... Once on YouTube, the 5d footage looks blurry, more blurry than the Vidster footage...

I tried H.264 as a compressor again... and it is even worse than the ProRes 422 HQ compressor...

Any other ideas? I have tried it so many ways (22 different exports with different settings now)... and my QuickTime movie just still looks nothing like it does once it is uploaded on YouTube... The QuickTime looks good, but it is terrible on YouTube... maybe I just notice the 5D looking so bad upon the YouTube upload because it is the highest quality and therefore is degraded the most?

The 5d footage looks very sharp and clear in Final Cut and in my QuickTime movie export... but then once on YouTube it looks terrible. The highest quality YouTube plays the video is 360... maybe I am not noticing how badly YouTube compresses the Flip and Vidster footage as it is already pixelated, but I notice how badly it puts the 5d footage through the meat-grinder as the 5d footage is higher quality before YouTube compresses it to hell?

Maybe I just need to have it on Vimeo? Thanks again for your thoughts.

You can try this, but it may not work. Sometimes when you heavily compress a video that is VERY sharp you get a surprising number of artifacts. In my experience this is more true with Flash and WMV files. H.264 seems better at this.

However, you might try and get rid of some of the sharpness before you compress. That way you are not wasting any of your bit budget trying to compress detail that won't show on computer monitor sized screens anyway. Try applying a blur filter set to .25 or .5 pixels.

Good luck

-Vance