Exported mov files have bad frames
by Sean Meredith
on
Jan 23, 2008 at 8:46:33 pm
I'm preparing to master six different digi-betas of my film for my deliverables. I rendered them all out: PAL and NTSC; Anamorphic, Letterbox and Full Frame. They all have bad frames interspersed. The frames have covered with large black or dark gray boxes with pinstripes coming down through them. These were 1080p uncompressed 10bit 23.98 timelines sent to uncompressed SD. So I went back to my big big master: 1080p23.98 AJA RGB Log timeline... same thing. I opened individual files in compressor... same thing. I've been working with these timelines for 18 months. None of this had been happening.
Thought it could have something to do with Black Magic DeckLink HD Pro's codec getting combined with the Apple Uncompressed 10bit codec, but the same issue occurs going from AJA to AJA. Couldn't even export from AJA RGB to NTSC DV50: got an error.
I'm worried it's a QT 7.4 thing (just upgraded during a momentary lapse of better judgement). I saw After Effects people are complaining about QT 7.4 screwing them up majorly. And that's happening to me too... getting permission errors while exporting.
Before I go through the difficult process of downgrading to QT 7.3.1, I thought I'd see if anyone has any other suggestions.
-sean
Sean Meredith
Director
www.dantefilm.com
My equipment: PM G5 Dual 2.3ghz; OS 10.4.11; FCP 5.1.4; QT 7.4; DeckLink 6.2; DeckLink HD Pro (single link); 3TB SATA RAID with Sonnet PCI card.
Re: Exported mov files have bad frames by Jeremy Garchow on Jan 23, 2008 at 9:50:59 pm
QT 7.4 seems to have screwed things up for sure. If this was something that you weren't seeing before the upgrade and now you are, it seems you might have solved this one on your own.
Re: Exported mov files have bad frames by Sean Meredith on Jan 23, 2008 at 10:38:22 pm
"What QTs don't open? Your captures or exports? "
my exports. AJA codecs or Uncompressed 10 bit. neither the ones I made before, during, or after the 7.4 upgrade.
sounds like I might need to start my os install from scratch. which really sucks since two week I did my first clean install in over two and a half years. it took all day.
well, at least I don't have the rental D5 and digi-beta decks sitting here costing money. then I'd be freaking.
Sean Meredith
Director
"Dante's Inferno"
www.dantefilm.com
Re: Exported mov files have bad frames by Sean Meredith on Jan 23, 2008 at 11:20:23 pm
I can't even open Uncompressed 10bit files that I made a few weeks ago, or ones I made after the upgrade, or ones I made after the downgrade. And that's technically a standard QT codec. So I didn't bother re-installing the AJA. AJA is listed as an export choice. Anyway, don't worry. I've just re-installed Tiger. Now for the hours of updates, etc.
thanks.
-sean
Sean Meredith
Director
"Dante's Inferno"
www.dantefilm.com
Re: Exported mov files have bad frames by Sean Meredith on Jan 26, 2008 at 2:08:52 am
so this problem is still unresolved. it's not a QT 7.4 issue. The only time I don't have this issue is when I put my 1TB SATA (that's normally in a FW800 enclosure) into my PM G5. That means I get these frames whenever I play from my SATA RAIDs or my FW800 drive. The QT, FCP, and System versions don't make a difference. I'm starting to wonder if I've got some kind of i/o hardware issue. Could QT just stop playing attention and display large blocks of blacks and grays if the data is getting garbled somewhere along the line.
Life is on hold as I try to figure this out. Great time for my daughter's mom to be out of the country for a few weeks.
Re: Exported mov files have bad frames by mediaart on Jan 26, 2008 at 5:31:26 pm
Just had the same problem with a client 60 minute film she has been working on for 3 years. Our solution was to render each sequence completely, look at it and when you see a bad frame, select the clip, do something to it like move it up a line and then back down, and then render that clip. Do that to the end of the sequence, then export 10 minute (more or less) sections as Quicktime. Open a new project, put the rendered clips in a new sequence, look at it again, fix any clips that screwed up or that you missed the first time by going back to original project and fixing them and then exporting just that 10 minute section, put the new export in to the new project and check again, then output the new sequence.
Tedious but it works.
Errors might be the result of multiple version of FCP being used on the project, or??? I have only had this problem once before, and it was a project that I had done multiple revisions on over a three year period.
Anyway, interesting that you had this same problem with what seems to be a similar project.
Good luck
Peter
FCP 6.0.2
OSX 10.4.11
QT 7.3.1
MacPro Quad 3mz
8 gig ram
KONA LHe
Re: Exported mov files have bad frames by Sean Meredith on Jan 26, 2008 at 5:56:08 pm
Okay, so I'm not totally unique or crazy. I've been making all my outputs from my BM 10bit 422 HD footage (since it's what my system can handle). So yesterday I finally gave up that route (taking weeks of works out to the woodshed). Now I've gone back to my Kona 10bit RGB master file. I've set it up to be my source for all my outputs. This film was edited through late 2006, screened at fests in 2007, and now we're making foreign and domestic deals and the number of different formats is kicking my butt. I started out using FCP 5.0something and now I'm using 5.1.4. But they were all v5.
Did you try things like copying the contents of your timeline into a new sequence? My problem is with the movies I output via compressor. I nested my HD sequence into SD sequences so I could finesse the deliverable (anamorphic, letterbox, full-frame), then output that sequence. Not exactly relevant to the problem, but with PAL, I've been export a 23.98 movie then changing the speed in Cinema Tools. So, it's hard to move the clip around when it's one full length clip. I could try to using the Media Manager to deal with all these clips, but I don't like trusting MM unless my mom says I have to.
It can get really confusing because some of the QT movies wouldn't have the problem consistently (I realized those are probably the source). Then there are the QT files I exported using them, which have the bad frames hard wired into them.
Did you try moving the project onto another system? Also curious what codecs you were working with.
-sean
Sean Meredith
Director
"Dante's Inferno"
www.dantefilm.com
Re: Exported mov files have bad frames by David Zimmerly on Jan 28, 2008 at 1:04:08 am
Just wondering if you might have a conflict between the Blackmagic and Kona codecs. Kona makes a point of identifying potential codec conflicts when you install their software, though if they played together well before, it could be a new QuickTime problem.
Re: Exported mov files have bad frames by Sean Meredith on Jan 28, 2008 at 1:10:49 am
Yeah, never had a problem with Kona and BM before. My main issue was converting from HD to NTSC & PAL using the Apple 10bit Uncompressed codec (which is pretty much the BM codec with Apple's name on it).
I'm about to try down rezzing from KONA 1080p to BM NTSC. We'll see what happens.
I'm using QT 7.2 now.
Sean Meredith
Director
"Dante's Inferno"
www.dantefilm.com
