HD from Apple ProRes422 to JPEG

Hi guys,

Perhaps you can help me with this confusion. When I drag my AVCHD clips exported from FCP to Apple ProRes422 to MPEG Streamclip, something strange happens. When I go to convert 1920 x 1080 24P clips to JPEG, they come back looking a little bit jerky, almost like the clip drank too much coffee! If I do this with my 1280 x 720 24P clips they come out flawless. Anyone have an idea what is going wrong here? I have tried them in all the codecs Pond5.com requires, and can't seem to solve it!

Any advice would be great!

Thanks,
Sue

Can you natively work with AVCHD files in your version of FCP? If you can you might consider skipping the ProRes422 and converting directly in StreamClip. Just an Idea - as I don't have knowledge directly of your issue. Could be a conversion problem OR a playback / graphics board problem. More wiser folks than I hopefully can weigh in.

Doesn't FCP support direct export of jpeg?

It does--but I've already exported hundreds of clips and don't want to go through all the hassle of Compressor. It should be said that at least the low-res preview clips Pond5 shows seem to look fine, but I just want to make sure people buying the clips are getting all that they paid for!

Its probably just too big for your computer to play normally.
There are other ways to preview it so it looks normal, like playing it in After Effects on "quarter" mode (1/4th the pixels used.) If it plays normally on pond5 it should be a normal file.


My computer plays full HD videos like that in quicktime,
and my computer is the epitome of human technology and beyond. Its
awesomeness is only dwarfed by my awesomeness. I use some other obscure mov player now that doesnt do that jerkiness.

Just in case you use Quicktime for playback: It can have issues when the files get big. If you open the movie inspector (cmd i) while viewing your clips, you´ll notice a difference between (original) fps and playing fps, which is a bit lower. Normally QTP maintains the actual duration of the video and skips some frames for playback if it can´t keep up, what will cause a jerky look. But there is nothing wrong with your video.

What you could do to be sure before uploading is

-in quicktime: enable view-play all frames. Then the video will run a bit slower but you will see all of your video frames (as if you where navigating through them with the arrow keys).

-try another player (like streamclip, usually works fine, or the player in finder).

-encode your stock clip to something every computer can display without issues, like DV codec, just for testing. If this file runs smoothly, your stock clip doesn´t have any dropped frames (I guess that´s what you wanna know).

Cheers,
Stefan

PS: If my clips drank my coffee, they would run at 1000 fps :).

Have you uploaded any of the clips that have this issue when you play them back? If so we can check them on our system and see if it's just an issue with your QT playback.