[grovberg]

So I went to see why no one was responding to my post, and found that the post, while having a thread, doesn't actually exist. Not sure how that happened, but let's try this again.

The short version is that I have frames from the source material showing up in the finished MP4 files, but are not to be found in the DV stream I use as an intermediary (sp?) step. In other words in a fictional project that starts by capturing 10 frames of video:

Capture frames one through 10 in FCE
Edit out frames one and two in FCE.
Export DV file containing frames 3 through 10.
Confirm that resulting DV file contains only frames 3 through 10.
Encode DV file into MP4 using Sorenson Squeeze.
Resulting MP4 file contains Frames 1 and 2 as well as 3 through 10 somehow.

Any thoughts on this? The DV format does contain some inter-frame compression right? So I figure it has something to do with that, I'm just not sure what to do about it. Any other format of roughly DV quality I can use? The whole reason I used the .dv streams in the first place was to avoid this kind of thing. Sigh....

-Grover

[Jacke]

Are you saving it to a FCE movie file or using the Quicktime export to DV stream? Gonna try this myself, but I'd like to reproduce your steps as closely as possible. I don't have Squeeze, so I'll try with QT Pro.

[grovberg]

Originally posted by Jacke:
Are you saving it to a FCE movie file or using the Quicktime export to DV stream? Gonna try this myself, but I'd like to reproduce your steps as closely as possible. I don't have Squeeze, so I'll try with QT Pro.

I'm using the following command:
File->Export->Using Quicktime Conversion
I export to a DV Stream (.dv file)

One thing I haven't tried and probably should is using the newer version of Squeeze (I haven't upgraded to four, where this is happening). Also, I should clarify that I don't think this normally happens (though it's hard to tell since the first frames of nearly everything I do are black), just on one specific file.
-Grover

[Jacke]

I'm not getting any of the extra frames you're talking about when I export from QT Pro. Does it do the same if you export to Final Cut movie (Final Cut movie is the same format as Quicktimes .mov, just rename it)?

You could also try exporting directly to MPEG-4 from FCE.

[grovberg]

Originally posted by Jacke:
I'm not getting any of the extra frames you're talking about when I export from QT Pro. Does it do the same if you export to Final Cut movie (Final Cut movie is the same format as Quicktimes .mov, just rename it)?

You could also try exporting directly to MPEG-4 from FCE.

Eek. Apple MPEG-4, no thank you.


Thanks for trying it out. I guess I'll just have to live with that frame.
-grover

[Jacke]

You can also try to compress to MPEG-4 video with 3ivx from FCE. You'll have to export it as a Quicktime movie file though, but using QT Pro (or even FCE, it seems) you can export to .mp4 using passthrough. Of course quality between different MPEG-4 encoders is highly subjective, but I'd rate 3ivx as one of the higher quality ones.

To export to .mp4 with passthrough, just import the 3ivx compressed video and the audio, then select Quicktime export to MPEG-4, under Options you can select passthrough for video.

[Uncle Skeleton]

Originally posted by grovberg:
Eek. Apple MPEG-4, no thank you.

So what codec were you using?

Incidentally, I've always gotten extra frames bleeding through my DV.mov reference files around edit points when encoding in Cleaner, from time to time (it's always been an issue, but only about 1 in 5 encodes do I notice it). To compensate, I always try to cut a frame or two early (before the edit and late after it) when it won't lose any important content. Since you're coming from an NLE instead of eg a DVD or TV rip, it should be no problem to give yourself a little extra black to play around with...

My theory is that Apple's swell frame-accurate editing isn't as frame-accurate as we'd always thought. Not such a huge deal, IMO