MPEG 4 video

Hi All,

A student has presented me with a dilemma!

She is trying to edit an MPEG4 file, square pix, 11.99fps @ 960x540.
(20mins approx raw footage.)
Really don't know any more info than above. Maybe it was 24p originally?

The original camera is several thousand kilometres away so we have the above file only.

Any ideas about best setup/procedure? We will probably end up on PAL DV or DVD.

I've tried a variety of codecs but we lose some of the footage and rendering times are lengthy.

cheers

Andy

If the file opens in QuickTime Player, hit Command j to find out the specs of the file. Once you know what you're working with, it will be easier to know how to treat it. If you cannot identify the specs, the camera may be thousand kilometers away, but you should still contact via email or telephone the camera operator to find out what settings were used for the footage and if the MPEG-4 files is even the original format recorded.

Since MPEG-4 is more of a delivery format than an editing format, my initial recommendation would be to convert the footage into an editable format that matches your FCP Sequence settings prior to importing it into your FCP project.

-DH

Hi David,

Thanks for the info.

I had brought the file into final cut and rendered a portion in both PAL DV
and Pro Res and it seems to render over a long period of time as one would expect.

The 11.99fps was a concern as it is an odd number dividing or subtracting a higher frame rate.
24fps seemed nearest to it.

Do you know why some of the footage dissappears when importing to the time line?
Oddly when the track is cut in half and dragged back to the Browser we can see the footage again.
Is it FCP adding and subtracting frames?

Thanks again

Andy