Sequence settings / render confusion

Hi,
One thing with FCP I never seem to understand is the way that it deals with sequence settings. I always find myself thinking: Final Cut Pro is smart, why can't it just figure out what my clip settings are and adjust it so that I don't have to do a render?
Quite frequently, I will get a video, and think that I understand exactly what format it is, etc.. and I will drag it into FCP and set the settings to match, and the red-line will persist, and force me to render... I just don't understand this.
Just now, I used Snap-Z-Pro to do a screen capture, and I recorded audio with my microphone via logic pro.. So I had an aiff and this quicktime .mov file (animation compression, 30fps) 921 x 926... All I wanted to do was combine them together, and export them to compressor so that I could make an h.264 video and upload it to the web.
I brought the video into FCP, told the sequence settings to be Animation.. I got the red line...
I set the resolution to custom, pixel aspect to square.. set the x & y to 921 and 926...
red line...
I also noticed that the clip attributes in the bin/browser show hat it is "10fps" when snapzpro recorded at 30fps, and it certainly does not look like 10fps.
... Anyway.. Lastly, I took a small 5 second clip and exported it to compressor to see how it looked.. And it looks awful. The frame size is super small and surrounded by black--- Even though the frame size of the sequence settings matches the frame size of the video! How do I tell FCP to just leave the original material alone and let me just add audio to it?
thank you!
-p

First off, you need to use Cinema Tools to conform your footage to 30fps. SnapzPro doesn't make a solid 30fps...it wavers when you play back. Cinema Tools will lock the frame rate...basically add timecode to lock thing into place. Dunno why Snapz does what it does.
Next, if you had FCP 6, it would make a sequence to match the settings. Although I am not sure about YOUR settings. FCP is designed for working with tape and tapeless broadcast formats, not strange sized windows. But this might help...Making a timeline with off-codec settings:
http://proappstuff.com/proapptipsvideotutorials/194F4DC2-ACBB-4DD6-A1D0-F46D7D8D CAFC/739BE552-5A0A-474C-8792-537C4082427B.html
Lastly...Animation is not an editing codec. It is an uncompressed codec that makes huge files and requires more than a firewire drive to play back...talking decent RAID here. If you converted to a different lighter codec then playback would be smoother.
Shane

Similar Messages

Questions regarding sequence settings, render, and export

Just a couple of questions:
1. Will my sequence settings and render quality affect my final output? I am thinking it does, and it may seem elementary to most of you, but it would be nice to get a definite answer. If so, then should I be rendering @ the best quality possible? In turn, should I too be switching my codec? Which correlates with my next question....
2. What codec should I be using? As it is I've been just getting footage off of mini dv. For best possible quality what should my workflow look like? Should I change my sequence settings codec to uncompressed? Which one? Uncompressed-8bit or 10 or animation? Or is okay to leave that setting at DC NTSC PRO?
Then, most importantly, when exporting what is my best possible output with the least amount of quality loss? For mediocore quality i've been exporting through h.264 or sorenson 3 - for a bit higher DV NTSC PRO, for max uncompressed 8 bit.... how about the other settings? deinterlace? cbr or vbr? etc..
Much thanks - I'm a lot confused concerning the technical usage of the program. B)

Hi David, thank you for the reply and welcome.
Just to clarify my workflow a bit more - I'm importing mini dv footage, but i'm altering that pretty much extensively with many overlays, in program effects, and various exterior plugins such as boris red, magic bullet, twixtor, etc.. Would mantaining a sequence suited for dv ntsc make sense if mantaining those effect's and overlay's vibrancy, motion, and color is key? Or should I then change my sequence settings to animation or uncompressed 8 or something other?
What I want for final output is a pristine master (basically I want what I see is what I get) that I can then downcompress for either internet (h264?) or dvd without too much headache. I think Animation only plays on computers? Would it hurt quality badly moving it to a dvd that is playable on dvd players? Or is another setting that I don't know the solution?
Does it hurt quality if I render it at lower draft settings and dv ntsc and then when i'm done change my sequence settings to higher settings and change it to, say, animation, AND THEN re-render and export to my sequence codec? I'm assuming no, because I'm still working with my original capture source, but just checking.
thanks again David, and to anyone that may be able to help! B)
Message was edited by: eric sanpablo

I'm confused by Export Settings- Match Sequence Settings

I’ve created three sample sequences that are all NTSC 720x480 16.9, but each has a different Fields setting (Lower, Upper, and No Fields). When Exporting (File->Export->Media), the CS5 manual states the following for the Match Sequence Settings feature:
To automatically export a file from a Premiere Pro sequence with settings that exactly match the settings for that sequence, select Match Sequence Settings in the Export Settings dialog box.
I’m confused what it is doing because when selected, it always sets the Field Type to Lower, even when the sequence is set to Upper or No Fields. However, using a Match Source Attributes Preset, when available, the Field Type will indeed match the sequence’s Fields setting. Also, the Match Sequence Settings wasn’t even available when the sequence was set to Lower Fields.
I did read in one of the forums where it was mentioned that checking the Match Sequence Settings will match the sequence's Preview File settings. If this is true, I don’t see where one can set the Field of Preview Files.
If anyone could shed some light on this issue, I’d be most grateful. Thanks.

I am confused about how to create a project setting as well as Export setting. I have few videos with width 640 & height 360. Frame rate is 29 FPS. In project setting Frame Size i used 640 by 360 & pixel aspect ration is square pixel (1.0) . after i finish with editing i wanna to export in movie so in export setting i click on Match Sequence then render starts with 50% video quality i wanna to make that 100% but option is disable so what to do?
If I don't click on match Sequence then render will come in default size that is 720x480 . In this video quality comes 100%.
I am totally confuse kindly Help in this case.

CC 2014 trial. MPEG MOVIE clips flickering on my time line! after render, and after export. tried all kinds of sequence settings,taking out transitions and effects ,even the audio tracks.....still flickering. They play fine outa the project files!? HELLL

CC 2014 trial. MPEG MOVIE clips flickering on my time line! after render, and after export. tried all kinds of sequence settings,taking out transitions and effects ,even the audio tracks.....still flickering. They play fine outa the project files!? HELLLLLPPPPP!!!!

We can not see your computer, your settings or even know what your source files are because we are not in the same room as you are!
We cant see what you are doing wrong ...so you will have to tell us a lot more and show us some screen grabs of your settings.

GoPro3 sequence settings still have to render?

I have converted all my files with MPEG streamclip, I've changed my sequence settings and I still have to render my video clips when I bring them into my timeline, why?! So frustrating!

Sequence Settings, HD Export problems.

1. I'm importing a perfectly good quality Quicktime Movie segment of about
150 MB
1344x840
H.264 codec
Duration 00'55
...in which it's perfectly easy to read small print in the movie. The source audio/video comes from the game World of Warcraft, and has to be processed in Quicktime Player Pro first in order for FCE to recognize and be able to import the file.
2. I'm being forced to render a lot to see the effect of any of my editing, this may be due to the input does not match anything in the Sequence Settings - which I have mostly only tried
HDV Apple Intermediate Codec 720p30
HDV Apple Intermediate Codec 1080i50
HDV Apple Intermediate Codec 1080i60
...I have no idea which ones I should be using, or if I should be using one of the confusing numbers of DV-PAL or DV-NTSC sequence settings. Since the video is closest to the 1280x720 of the 720p30 I've been using that.
3. End problem is that no matter what I do to the export settings, - I've spent about ten hours now trying different export formats - I always seem to lose a lot of quality in the process. The small text is not readable. The quality loss is simply too much for me to want to present the final product to anyone.
I'm currently trying to fiddle with export settings in QTP in order to hopefully evade having to do so much rendering in FCE, but so far no success. Any help would be much appreciated, as this has bothered me for a long time now, and may be enough cause for me to give up on FCE altogether.

Try this free third party app:
http://www.squared5.com/
You have to decide which format you want to work with in FCE and use that Easy Setup. Read the details when you are at the Easy Setup window, each are different to suit incoming audio and video.
Then use Streamclip to convert your original footage to conform to your chosen Easy Setup, audio rate and video size.
Al

Sequence Settings while using HD footage in 4:3 Aspect Ratio

Maybe this is a silly question but I'm still a little confused when it comes to aspect ratios and sequence settings. I'm in FCP 7 and I want to edit HD footage in a 4:3 aspect ratio.
What should my sequence settings be if I don't want to have to continually render? Or is that even possible?

Tom said the magic words: edited sequence.
For ease of editing, cut your show in its native format, THEN drop into anSD sequence.
i've got a corporate client who does this all the time. But it only allows them to be very sloppy in their shooting, because they can always reframe stuff at this stage. you should see some of that stuff!

Sequence settings for MPEG

Hello
Which is the best sequence settings in Premier Pro CS4 to work with MPEG files (720 x 480)?
I wish someone can help me because there are no presets available for this format and my redering times are huge.
Thank you in advance.

I will go on working with the red line. It is true that I have a slow
machine and that causes problems in the preview, but for export it is OK.
Thank you very much for your useful advice.
Sabrina
2010/2/14 Bill Hunt <[email protected]>
As Harm points out, Rendering (the need for which is indicated by the "red
line.") is ONLY for playback. I complete many Projects, and never need to
Render, as things play fine. Other times, I might Render a Keyframed section
dozens of times, looking closely at what I have done, as smoothly as is
possible). Don't be put off by the red line. Only Render if playback starts
to stutter, etc. Then, you might only need to Render part of the Timeline,
and that can be controlled with the WAB (Work Area Bar) to limit the area of
the Render. Note: if you do adjust the WAB, it's always a good idea to hit
the \ [Backslash key], and then Dbl-click on the little "box" in the middle
of the WAB to reset it to full, before you do an Export. Though most Export
options can be set to WAB, or Full Sequence, I've found a few, that got
confused and try to Export just the WAB, regardless of the setting. Maybe
CS4 has finally fixed this 100%? I still do that reset of the WAB out of
habit.
>
Good luck,
>
Hunt
>

Sequencer Settings - what do they affect?

First time user here, I'm a little confused about the documentation about the Sequencer Settings (Control+0), the settings such as quality, codec, etc, what exactly do they affect (and by that I mean at what level).
Do they affect the way they are rendered as I am previewing my project or when I do the final render/export?
Does it affect quality and codec if I use FC to export or if I send to Compressor will it affect the way Compressor renders it? what if I use pass-through settings with compressor? Will the Sequencer Settings in FC affect that too? Basically I'm looking for the scope of how much of FC's Sequencer Settings affect.

It effects your performance and rendering in FCP. It effects your export functions and output to tape. It does not effect send to or share.

Best Sequence settings to work with HDV on FCP6

Friends
I'm a wedding videographer, I just got FCP6 and I have some doubts regarding Sequence Settings to work with HDV, if possible, could someone please help me?
I have a MacBook Pro, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33 ghz and 2 GB Ram...
I started my FCP6 and selected Easy Setup as HDV-1080i60 FireWire Basic
1-) On Sequence Settings, General Tab, I left it as the easy setup set for me (Compressor HDV 1080i60, quality 100%, field UPPER, etc...).
2-) On Video Processing tab which options should I select?
a) Render in 8 bit YUV or Render all YUV material in High Precision YUV ?
b) Motion Filter Quality as Normal or Best ?
c) In Process Maximum White should I selected White or Super White ?
3-) On Render Control tab:
a) I set codec to Apple ProRes 422.
b) in Master Templates and Motion Projects, should I set Quality to NORMAL or BEST ?
c) in Master Templates and Motion Projects, should I check the box "Always Use Best Quality When Rendering Movies" ?
thanks ererybody for your attention.
Regards
Marcelo

Hi Marcelo
After choosing your Easy Setup my advice would be to leave everything on its default setting, except for switching the Render Control to Apple ProRes 422. Don't sweat the details, it really is that simple.
Stand by tho ... others will almost certainly chime in quickly with all the details you can shake a stick at, but if they all get rather confusing then revert to plan A above and enjoy.
Andy

What Should my sequence settings for H264, 1280x720/30fps be. Pro Res422?

I have a job coming up and an fully aware of the nightmare of editing H.264. The footage I've got was shot on a flip camera. H.264, 1280x720 at 30fps. The deliverable is DVD. Am I right in choosing ProRes 422 for the sequence settings? I notice when comparing the clip in the browser window to the same clip in the viewer window, the clip in the viewer window looks a tad wider. Is this a pixel aspect thing.
My sequence settings are as follows;
Under the General Tab;
Frame Size: 1280x720
Aspect ratio: HDTV 720p (16:9)
Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square (Anamorphic 16:9 is unchecked0
Field Dominance: Lower (even)
Editing Timebase: 29.97
QuickTime Video Settings:
Compressor: Apple ProRes 422
Quality: 100
Audio: 44.1

Shane, thank you for your reply. I want to be sure I understand you correctly. Convert the footage before bringing it in to FCP (compressor), or can I just render in the time line as I build the sequence? I plan on exporting a same as file for use in DVD studio Pro for a deliverable.

Using Animation in your Sequence Settings ... Amazing!

Well here's the thing ....
And I'll start off by saying I have so much to learn about FCP but this has made a big difference to how my images look, especially graphics and titles.
So I'm working away at my project and the graphic images that I import into the timeline from the viewer are just ok and I'm a bit disillusioned like so many people seem to be on these forums about how the image degrades from the viewer to the canvas. And of course it is apparent later on the QT file and then the DVD that's produced at the end.
So one day, and I can't remember how it came about, I open the sequence settings and change the Compressor in QT Video Settings to Animation! Well what can I say, the image in the canvas was absolutely perfect and in some cases, it's actually a little better than how it looked in the viewer before I brought it across.
I have to produce a DVD where each week, some of the moving footage and graphic images have to be changed over. A total of about 15 minutes and all of it of course is in this Animation sequence. The downside of using Animation is
(1) the rendering time is horrendous, (or is that horrenderous?)
(2) as I'm editing, the playhead disobeys what you ask of it and you get the spinning beach ball quite often (can take 1-4 minutes before you can continue again)
(3) sometimes when you're playing through the timeline the image on the canvas and the sound quality are poor (processor running out of puff I guess)
It's a bit of a nightmare but I have no choice but to use Animation now the Marketing Department have seen the difference and expect the higher quality on the images. Cannot get this quality with any other setting I've tried in the Compressor setting. HDV1080 for instance means the rendering problem goes away but the difference in quality is obvious. The project has many different files and formats from HDV to H264s to Pro Res 422s and lots of various jpegs in various forms. But regardless of the project, I have experimented with unrelated sequences in different projects with the same result.
My questions are..... has anyone else experienced this, is there another setting that would bring about the same results and lastly, would the rendering and the other problems significantly be reduced with say the top-end iMac?
I have to tell you I almost didn't post this coz I have so little experience with FCP but it would be great to get your feedback. The weekly project I produce may take more time than it should but I have to say I'm happy with the results.
Thanks for reading.
Peter L

Well... the animation codec is primarily used for sneakernetting files from one platform to another, mac to pc for example. It's a bear for a lot of computers to even play out a file without choking. The concept is make animation file, put on disk or drive, carry across the hall to the pc station, convert to something the pc station can use without choking.
I would suggest you try a little experiment: take your input material and convert it to prores (NOT HQ) before import or WHEN you import (log and transfer) and work with that natively. HDV as HDV is really a cruddy medium. Prores will give you a much better color space and have actual frames all the way through, which hdv does not. Take a one minute section of material, load on some graphics and filters etc, render it out, do your whole production process and see what it looks like. Once you move beyond the artifacts inherent in hdv and h.264 encoding you might be surprised.
Bad mistake to point out to marketing folks how cool it looks. You must be young!

Authoring to DVD w playback monitor capable of HD, Sequence settings?

Hello Macaroonies,
As the subject line reads, I'm working on a project w a final output for playback on DVD hooked up to a HDTV ready 16:9 monitor.
I'm working in the sequence setting preset NTSC 3:2 (720x480) and plan on converting the finished edit to progressive as a last step. The theory here is to maintain a less-renders-required workflow in standard Ntsc (ie 480i) and convert to progessive just before output.
Is this the highest quality setting possibility in this case? Are there better ways to author to DVD and take advantage of the monitors capabilities?
The monitor itself is reformatting the image from 4:3 to 16:9 and it looks good. As an option, should I have the anamorphic setting activated within FCP sequence settings?
Thanks, Mac ain't cheeze
Drew

Alright, that helps a lot.
This is something of a gray area, but if you're ultimately going to be playing back on this monitor - and only this monitor - you can forgo the Anamorphic thing because you can simply use the LCD monitor's in-built menu to fill the frame (as, I believe, you said you're doing currently).
Of course, in the off chance that this project needs to be played on any other monitor (or a 4:3 monitor), you're backed into a corner.
Personally, I would favor going Anamorphic - and adjusting your monitor appropriately - but the distortion issues confuse/annoy many people.
Now, if you're looking to make a progressive (as in 480p) DVD, I would suggest trying out the DV NTSC 48kHz - 23.98 sequence preset. Or it's anamorphic sibling. (How where you thinking of going progressive?)

Does exporting DV using "Match Sequence Settings"

I am capturing VHS and Hi8 home video using a Canopus ADVC-300 and Premiere Pro CS6. The output is DV, about 14GB/hour. Most of the captures are unattended (have a 4 TB disk, backed up of course, but space is not a big concern right now). I'd like to get everything imported before starting any serious editing, so I capture each tape twice: the first time, the video itself; then I rewind, turn the timestamp indicator overlay on, and capture again with the camera running at 2x speed. That way I can quickly find when a particular segment of a tape was recorded without winding the tape around in the camera, looking for the scene and the time isn't overlaid over the image.
I have two questions:
1) Since the captures are unattended, I need to trim the blue screen off the end of each captured files to save disk space. I'd like to confirm that if I trim a sequence and export with "Match Sequence Settings" set, that Premiere will not re-encode the DV except for the parts that I actually changed (I sometimes use dip to black around damaged segment of tape). Based on the export speed, I don't think it's recompressing and the quality looks the same but I'd like to double-check.
Does Premiere Pro CS6 always mark the timeline with the colored bar if processing is required? The "dip to black" parts get a yellow bar, but the rest has no bar. That would be a clue.
Also, the export dialog has "Use Maximum Render Quality" unchecked by default. I check it -- does it matter?
2) What is the best way to permanently associate a date/time with the captured video? I didn't see any way to bake it into the DV for each segment. I'm using comments in sequence markers, set at the start of each clip, but the sequence markers don't move if I ripple-delete, say 10 seconds of noise in the middle of a track. I can't figure out how to get markers attached to the video track instead of to the sequence. I found some videos that say how to do this, but they don't seem to apply to CS6. I found that if I export the sequence, the markers then do get backed into the DV. But I need them not to move if I ripple-edit. Is that possible?
3) My plan is to add a 3 or 5 second overlay title to the beginning of each segment saying what it is and when it was captured, but only for the final export. Is there a trick that I could use to create a title from a marker? This is not a big deal, but seems like a useful feature.
Sorry if the answer to these questions are obvious -- thanks for your patience.

Thanks for replying. The reason I want to re-export the captured DV is because I capture unattended, and don't know how much video there is on a 2 hour Hi8 tape or VHS tape.
I could find out by fast-forwarding through the tape and stopping, but it's more efficient to just capture the entire tape and then trim the end off the tape and re-export. I'm planning on archiving the raw DV capture, and 1-1/2 hours will fit on a 25GB BluRay disk. Two hours won't.
Thanks for the tip about the project panel. I never scrolled it to the right far enough to see the "description" or "log note" field. Hopefully those notes will wind up in the metadata of the DV .AVI file, but even if it doesn't, I'm planning on archiving the Premiere Pro project file with the DV .AVI file.
The copy/paste from marker to title is what I'm doing now. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something easier.
So... does anyone know if Premiere Pro will pass-through the original DV if I re-export after making minor edits?

Sequence settings misunderstanding

Hello everybody. I have searched the forums and have went back to the manual for FCP but cant seem to find the answer to my questions. Any help would be appreciated.
I am curious about the sequence settings in FCP. I believe that a mistake was made in the very beginning and i know that the editing timebase cannot be changed once a sequence has been created and edited in. It seems that other changes can be made though.
Before I go further, here is my set up... I shot on HDV 1080 24p (1440X1080).
My sequence settings for the project seem to deviate from what I shot at. Some things are as they should be and others are not. The frame size is good, the pixel aspect ratio is good, and my audio settings seem on track too.
However, The field dominance is set to Upper(odd)....this should be set to 'none' since i shot progressive correct??? My editing timebase is 29.97, since i shot 24p and it cannot be changed... how does this effect my project/the final output to dvd ?? My quicktime video settings are set to HDV 1080i60, it seems that I can change this back to what it was shot at, but my question about this is what exactly does this effect in relation to my project and final out put of the project to DVD??
I have not had any major problems viewing or working on my project in FCP. I have done a few tests with compressor and then burning to dvd, and my quality seems to be less than what I would like. I have tried different compression settings including HD MPEG-2 @ 18Mbps.
Could the loss of quality be coming from my current settings in FCP or are they more than likely in Compressor. If my frame controls in compressor are on, what should the rate conversion be set to, and what qualities does this effect? I also am not understanding the deinterlace settings. If the output field setting is to 'same as source', why does it even give you a choice if you shot progressive?? I AM Confused about these settings as well.
I realize there are many questions bundled within this post. Please be patient with me and any info would be appreciated.
thanks
joe

To my knowledge HDV at 1080 is interlaced.
You could:
Open a new sequence and drop a HDV clip in/FC will ask if you want to conform the sequence to the clip-click yes/sequence settings will now match the clip and show you exactly what you are dealing with. This info can also be found in the columns for each clip and sequence but I find sequence view is easier to understand what you have.
Creating a Blu-Ray via Compressor is your only option for HD on a disc. DSP has no relevant HD options as HD-DVD lost the format war to BR over two years ago.

Sequence settings / render confusion

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for