I'm importing analogue video via firewire (converted to Thunderbolt) and instead of creating a single half hour clip, FCP is splitting it into multiple smaller clips. I don't want this. How do I make it not do this?
iMac (2017 – 2020)
I did actually use Quicktime the first time, but it imports with all this ghosting on fast movement. It's not interlace because it's not the comb effect and deinterlacing doesn't make it go away. When I import into Final Cut, the same frame looks clean. Here are the screen grabs. First with the ghost using QT and second clean in FCP. Is there a setting in QT which will fix this?
That's an interesting question. So I checked one of the clips imported in FCP, in the Finder, and it does show a frame rate of 25, which is almost 24.98, but not the same. Could that be the issue? Canopus has no setting for frame rate, it just happens. I have not set anything differently for FCP or QT, but QT is giving this unusual, slightly different frame rate. Why?
It's Hi8 PAL video via a Canopus ADVC 100 firewire analogue to digital converter. Involves a bunch of cables and dongles to get it to the Mac, but I saved money on one dongle, but using my wife's older iMac with it's Thunderbolt 2 port (mine is a Studio with only T3).
I notice that when I output the imported footage from FCP, I get interlaced video, which is what I want because I can then properly deinterlace it. I guess I just have to put all the clips in the timeline to output a single file, but I am still wondering why I am getting that ghost image when I use Quicktime.
Almost that. It's actually PAL SD 702x576 25i. But the thing is, the video has this problem before it gets to Final Cut. It has this blur when scanned in using Quicktime. Why is QT giving me this weird output?
Final Cut chops the scan into loads of scenes and that could be alright, but it reacts to any tiny glitch in the video and so drops frames every time it cuts the video into a separate clip, so importing to Final Cut direct looks good, but is not good because it's dropping frames. QT scans at one single file, but it has this ghost thing.
To clarify the issue; I can't scan the video directly into FCP because it chops the video into clips and in so doing, drops frames which would otherwise not be dropped if it was one continuous video (my older scan is smooth, but I used a cheap USB dongle, so the quality is not as good as via firewire/thunderbolt with the Canopus hardware).
If I scan with QT, I get this ghosting instead of an interlaced file. I want interlace so I can then deinterlace afterwards, but the ghosting is baked in, so that's no good. Why is QT doing this and FCP is not?
I don't know if this is a cause but the QT inspector says the encoded frame rate is 24.98. Are there settings in the Canopus for the capture specs?
If you capture within FCP and view the file in QT Player, what does the Inspector say is the frame rate?
The wrong frame rate can definitely be a reason for bad captures. I'm sorry but I don't know why QT Player is doing this and not FCP. There have been several discussions here about trouble capturing through all the convertors but I don't recall the issue being broken looking captures, just that they couldn't capture at all. Hopefully someone with more experience capturing this way will chime in.
So I seem to have found an effective workaround. Tried using Premier Pro to input and it happily keeps the digitizing as one single clip. It remains interlaced and so I can de-interlace happily after and I get the quality I want. Sections which Final Cut Pro cut up into clips resulted in lost frames so a jumpy sequence. Using Premiere did not do this, so those sequences are smooth. That's the way to go, but too bad Final Cut will not allow us to input as a single clip, if we choose to.
Having said that, at this point digitizing old video is probably not a primary function of Final Cut Pro these days, so they probably will not look to address this.
Thanks to respondents for trying to help.
I recently ran into this exact same problem. I ended up capturing (analogue video via firewire) through Quicktime > File > New Movie Recording.
If you don't get audio, try unplugging the firewire for a few seconds, then trying again.
Correction: The file seems to be 702x576, but the project is 720, as you describe.
You can’t. Try capturing using the QuickTime Player. This might give you a continuous recording unless there are breaks in the data stream.
Use QuickTime Player to import. Click the little downward caret in the New Movie Recording window to select your camera or playback device.
Where did this footage originate? Film? What source format are you capturing from? How was it transferred?
What are your project settings? PAL SD, 720x576, 25i?
Thanks for updating us.
Stop Final Cut from separating clips!
