Mac Vidding 101

I'm trying to clip an mp4 file. MPEG Streamclip can open it just fine, but when I select my in and out points and attempt to make an .MOV clip, MPEG Streamclip says "Error: the movie is too long," despite the fact that my source material is only five minutes long and my clip is about six seconds. I've tried restarting; I've checked to make sure I'm running the latest version of MPEG Streamclip (1.9.2). Any thoughts?

I just made a video with an mkv file in Final Cut Exp for the first time. (I converted it to .mov for editing first.) I'm having two problems: the playback in the Canvas is slowed down and when I exported it, the clips didn't match what they looked like in FCE. In some cases they begin and end on different frames, so the video looks nothing like I intended. I hoped that the slowness was just an artifact of playback in FCE and would go away when I exported it, but it didn't.

The last few days, when I've tried to use MPEG Streamclip to convert / export a Quicktime .mov file into a smaller .avi file, I've been getting a "compression error."

I tried downloading the latest version of MPEG Streamclip, but that doesn't seem to have made any difference.

Has this happened to any of y'all, and if so, how did you fix it? :-)


ETA: I've just downloaded iSkysoft, which seems capable of converting an mov into an avi.

I've just started using Final Cut Pro X and I'm still figuring out where everything is and how it works.

At this moment I have two primary questions: how to deinterlace, and how best to export?

(I've been exporting to Quicktime, winding up with a large .mov file which I then open in MPEG StreamClip to re-export as a small divx .avi so I can upload vid drafts for beta, but surely there's a less-unwieldy way to do this.)

(Also, when I do it that way, even though the Quicktime movie retains the 16 x 9 aspect ratio of my footage, the .avi file I wind up with at the end of that process appears to be 4 x 3, which is annoying.)

Thanks in advance for any suggestions you can offer!

For some reason I can no longer fully deinterlace video when exporting from mpeg streamclip. I'm using all the same settings I've been using for years, but the reinterlace chroma box is grayed out and I cannot uncheck it anymore.

Anyone have any idea why my dependable clipping software has suddenly gone nuts? Just that one damn button can no longer be unclicked. Grrrrrr

So I pressed some button when I was trying to Render the other day and this suddenly happened to my timeline (both video and audio are affected):

( Read more... )

I hate this. I don't know what those blue lines do and I hate having each track be essentially two tracks wide. It's such a small thing, but it's messing up the whole flow of my vid. How do I get back to where I was, without messing up my vid? I guess I could just open a new project and c&p, but I'd rather not, if it's just an easy fix. Thanks!

ETA: Okay after some more consultation with a friend and even more random button mashing, I figured out what it was. I'd somehow managed to toggle the keyframes on the button at the bottom left of the timeline. Everything's back to normal now!

I upgraded my Mac to Lion and have just discovered that Mac the Ripper is no longer supported. Damn, I've been using it for a long time and really liked it. Anyone got a recommendation? I've got Handbrake, too, so I'll give that a shot, but it's been so long since I went looking for a dvd ripper, I wondered if there might be something new out there.

 So... I don't know if this is a resolvable problem, but I'm wondering if other mac/Final Cut folks have come up with some options encoding to Mpeg-2 for vividcon sumbission.  

Working with 16:9 footage, basically, what I've done is created a large uncompressed MOV file out of final cut, used Mpeg streamclip to convert as discussed here and then ffmpegx to get it to 4:3 as per these instructions. 

The aspect ratio looks good, and even the image quality seems OK but for some reason it is much darker then my standard Mp4 file for video upload. I can't imagine it will look very good projected, which is so disappointing! Maybe it's just a function of the two step process necessary to get the aspect ratio right because of the rectangular pixels. I'm wondering whether I should (and this thought sits *very* wrong) brighten the whole vid! 

Anyone run into this problem? Any makeshift solutions? Thanks!

In a nutshell, I have perfect audio but can't view my clips at all in iMovie. 

While the audio plays throughout, some of my clips will play as black/blank in both the preview and the project. Some will stick on the thumbnail image as though it were a still picture. The weirdest part is that some will play perfectly fine. 

It might be a file issue: all the files are .mp4 and technically mp4 isn't an acceptable file type (except some of them work fine???).  I downloaded them all from the same source. Some solutions offered online included changing file locations, but I'm at a loss. 

Has anyone else solved this problem? Can anyone recommend an easy converter for Macs and a file type that is foolproof in iMovie? 

//Edit: I was playing with the clips that did work when suddenly my projects and previews both went black. ): Great. 

I'm noticing a slow uptick of people offering their vids in ipod friendly format and I was wondering if anyone here has some suggestions about how to encode into an ipod-friendly m2v format? Should I be using ffmpegx? I've noticed that whenever I use ffmpegx to encode any of my vids it darkens the vid significantly and I dunno why. But furthermore I just haven't been able to figure out how to get my own (dark) m2v small enough for ipod watching.

ETA: answered in the comments! Sweet! Also go me for mixing up m2v when I knew I wanted to say m4v. Oh, brain. Quicktime > Export > Save to iphone saves it as a handy m4v ! Yayayay.

I had a hard drive failure and had to reinstall software, including DiVX. However, apparently the newer version of DiVX adds a watermark to all avi files and there's no way to turn this off on Macs. There's a post from a year ago about this problem that suggested using a program called Perian instead of DiVX, but that didn't seem to work for everyone. I was just wondering if there have been any solutions discovered since then. I can't stand the way it looks.

Does this mean I have to have this ugly logo in all vids I make from avi files? I use MPEG Streamclip to make clips and Final Cut Express to edit. I just laboriously downloaded a whole season and made a whole bunch of clips and started to make a vid, but there's that horrible watermark in the corner of every clip and it's driving me crazy.

ETA: Perian works! Not only that, but now I have audio when viewing avi files in MPEG Streamclip, which had mysteriously disappeared. I'm so happy now. I uninstalled DiVX, FYI.

I have a certain part of the song where iMovie 9 consistently has this weird stalling behavior, and I've tried it with two sets of clips.

I have two clips, like this:

XXXXxYYYYY

What happens is that it plays like this:

XXXXxxxxYY, where it freezes the video on the last frame of X and then picks up the Y clip in the middle. The audio is fine.

Does anyone have any idea what might be going on here?

I am a total n00b to vidding (and quickly being reminded of why I gave up before). I'm attempting to use the "make DV clips in MPEGStreamClip so I don't have to import an entire movie into iMovie 9" method, and I am beginning to think I should suck it up and import the entire movie, because I cannot figure out how to make the aspect ratio play nice.

What is happening is this:

My source is 720 × 304, which does not seem to be 16:9. I don't know what it is (16:6.8?).

When I export a clip from MPEGStreamClip, it forces me to export as 16:9, resulting in a horizontally squished clip. I cannot find a way to fix this in either MPEGStreamClip or iMovie.

Does anyone more experienced (which is...everyone, probably) know how I can fix this, or should I just try to import the entire movie? I presume that even if I do that, I'm going to run into the aspect ratio problem later when I export, so what does one do when one's source is apparently in a non-standard aspect ratio? Is there some way to add black space to the top and bottom of the movie to fill it out into 16:9?

Thanks!

Sorry for the cross-post!

Hey, all. I'm on a Mac (OS X 10.4.11, PPC). So, I've used MPEG Streamclip for a while to cut down clips before I import them into iMovie and it's always worked great. Have been using version 1.9.3b4 with no problem...

...until my computer crashed due to an unrelated problem, and I had to get my hard drive wiped. I had to re-download all my codecs and everything.

Quicktime (basic, don't have Pro) was having a problem playing some of my .avis, so I re-downloaded and installed Divx. Then, Quicktime played my .avis fine. (Which makes sense, since Quicktime said the files were encoded with Divx 5.0.)

But when I opened those .avi files in MPEG Streamclip, at first, I got no video, no sound. I downloaded and installed Xvid, Perian, the MPEG-2 playback component, and re-installed Divx. No video, no sound.

After I installed FlipForMac and moved the Divx delegate-thingy into the right folder (I had it in the wrong library), I got sound in Streamclip, but no video.

Also, Streamclip will play my .mov and .mp4 files just fine.

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? I'd really like to be able to make clips. :(

Hi all,

So I have had this problem with Final Cut for a few months where if I use the Export as Quicktime conversion --> export as divx option, it repeats a random snippet of the music right at the end of the vid, i.e., the song will fade out and there'll be a one note blast right at the end.

I have previously had two workarounds with this - either just open up the file in Streamclip once I'm done and rexport as an avi with the last second or so cut off, or export from Final Cut as a huge quicktime movie -- where there's no audio problem -- and rexport as an avi from Streamclip.

However! For my current project this isn't working, because however I export from Streamclip, some sections of it come up all pixellated and unpleasant. So now I am trying to figure out why Final Cut does this in the first place, but am drawing blanks. Anyone got any suggestions?

I came across this annoyance again today, when I received a vid from someone that had been made using DivX encoded files. You guys may already know this, but I wanted to reiterate it because I don't want the jokers at DivX making a cent off unsuspecting Mac users.

If you've had the annoyance of the appearing/disappearing DivX watermark when making a vid, don't think that you can make it go away by buying their software. I have purchased many versions of DivX Pro over the years, including the latest version. There is NO WAY to disable this logo on the Mac. You can view video without it (using Perian or VLC for playback) but you can NOT remove the logo for editing/re-encoding purposes. This was my official response from the DivX "support team."

On 10/1/2010 DivX responded:
Dear DivX User,

Thanks for contacting DivX!

Unfortunatly(sic) there is no way to turn the DivX logo watermark off on our software for Mac.

Regards,
DivX Support Team

This was with the full, Pro version of the software. Do not support these guys and do not give them money in the hopes of making the logo go away. (Alternately, if you know a way, please tell me -- but I'm reasonably certain it can't be done.)

I used this tutorial by swannee for ripping my supernatural dvds to .dv. (using mac the ripper then MPEG streamclip)
however, my files tend to come out about 8.7GB to 9GB for a 40min episode. Is there a way to make the file size smaller without changing my file formats? I'd prefer keeping them in .dv

I have a dilemma and I'm hoping someone can help me. I don't want sugar coating, I don't want sales pitches of the software you use, I don't want "well, it's all up to you". I wan honest facts that will ultimately help me in making my decision. Also, don't be afraid to tell me the truth and what you think I should avoid. If I take your advice or if I don't, don't worry about it. Don't worry about whether you are making the right decision for me, that's my decision to make, I just want you to share with me what decision you made.

Okay, now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's talk geek ;)

I use Adobe Premier CS4 right now and I've been reading up on Final Cut (Express and Pro). Currently I'm stumped. I've read so many things about Final Cut, because I'm not familiar with it as I am with Premier. I've read that Final Cut will not work very well on a MacBook, that I'll have to get a MacBook Pro or an iMac. However, a friend told me that I shouldn't bother getting Final Cut Pro with an iMac, cause it won't work any faster on it. That if I wanted to use Final Cut Pro, I should get a Mac Pro (which is too expensive!). So, I figured I'll just get FCE. But my friend said that going from Premier to FCE is a step down, that it would be wiser and cheaper to get Premier and invest in a PC. ... Decisions, decisions o_o

So, my first question is: Which program do you use and with which kind of computer/laptop? If you use both Final Cut (Express & Pro) and Premier, which do you prefer using and why? Which one do you believe I should invest in?

I currently own a MacBook and running Premier CS4 on it is becoming tasking. I'm always getting a notice that my startup disk is almost full, even though I pretty much deleted all my files that I don't use and emptied the trash and close down firefox while I'm working. It's also lagging when I do play back. I have to close the program down several times because I need to restart it due to no sound when I'm making the video (there aren't any sound waves for the clips I'm working on) or because it's just hung on me.

Which brings me to my next question:
Do you use Final Cut or Premier or both on your laptops or do you have a separate PC for that, or do you have two laptops? I really need to know if I should get Premier with a new PC, or if I can get away with working on this Mac with the new Premier or if I should just get the FCE (which is supposed to be much lighter and therefore will work on my MacBook).

Again, I really need some honest, hard and helpful facts and opinions. I really want to invest in the right thing, because this is a career choice for me, money is tight and I truly need to know what I should invest in now. So, let me have it :)

Thank you so much for anything you can give me.

I just joined the comm and I'm interested in purchasing Final Cut Studio. At the moment I own a MacBook.

My question is, will Final Cut work on MackBook, or is it absolutely necessary to purchase the MacBook Pro? I would prefer not to have to spend that money on another laptop. My thing is, I want to invest in a Final Cut Studio, learn how to use and then take the exam to get certified. I'm hoping to turn this into an editing career.

I've read many forums and they all basically say that it runs fine, but some features might be too slow. Some say to just wait and invest in a MacBook Pro and then have the whole package. But like I previously said I would rather not spend that money on another laptop.

Any help and advice will be highly appreciated :)

Hi all. I've got an M4V file here which I'd like to clip using MPEG Streamclip, but it's apparently not a file format that Streamclip recognizes. A quick google search brought me to this M4V-to-AVI for Mac post, so I downloaded that and installed it, but when I tried to "add" the file so it could be converted, the software told me "This file add failed."

Just for kicks, I tried changing the file extension to mp4 and tried to open that (no dice), and then tried to convert it to avi using Wondershare (recommended here), but that too failed.

Anyone have any thoughts on how I might be able to convert this file to something that MPEG Streamclip can read?

ETA: The more digging around I do, the more it seems as though this might be an issue of DRM. Ack. Anyone have tips for dealing with that?

Basically, I'm interested to know what to expect when upgrading from Final Cut Express to Final Cut Pro.

I'm pretty damn comfortable with FCE so I'm wondering if the upgrade is worth the change over? Is there much to be gained for fanvid making?

Many thanks for any tips.

I've just discovered that blip.tv, which is where I've been streaming my vids from, has scrunched them to 4x3 despite the fact that they are 16x9. (The divx files themselves, when played on VLC, look just fine; it's only when I upload them for streaming that blip messes them up.) Apparently other people are having this problem with blip too, but blip's suggestions aren't very helpful -- they suggest re-rendering the video with the "anamorphic" checkbox un-ticked, and I don't think HyperEngine AV has such a check-box.

Anyway... has anyone else had this problem, and/or does anyone have thoughts on how I might fix it?


ETA: I figured out a solution; I'm not crazy about it, but it seems to work. If I open the divx file in Quicktime, and re-export it as a Quicktime .mov, and manually change the settings to 640 x 360, then the upload is visibly 16 x 9 the way it's supposed to be. (Am posting this solution here in case anyone else ever has this problem!)

I've just recently upgraded to FCP 7.0.2 and made my first vid yesterday. Everything works fine until I get to exporting it. Normally, I export it to either a .mov or .mp4 file via Quick Time export compression. Did the same thing this time, but the aspect ratio of the end result was all messed up. Source was 624 x 350, but the exported file ended up being 624 x 315. When I choose the custom size and enter 624 x 350, I just end up with letterbox effect.

I've tried everything I can think of, but nothing seemed to be working. Anyone knows how I can get this sorted?

Thanks in advance!

Hi all--I posted at vidding_tech, but maybe this is a better comm to ask this question at, as I'm vidding in FCP on a mac.

I've run into a problem at the exporting stage. In FCP, my file looks great. When I export, either to DIVX or to MOV and then MPEG4, I get a white line occasionally cutting through the image. Anyone know what the culprit is?

I also noticed the same line running through some other Sherlock vids (yes, it is a Sherlock vid... shiny new footage with shiny new tech problems!) posted online (not mine). Is it possibly something to do with the format of the source footage itself?

Thanks!

 I hope this is okay to post, I went back through the posts and couldn't exactly find what I was looking for. :/

I'm new to Mac (as in the first time I used it  EVER was yesterday when I got my laptop) but I've made videos before on my Windows computer. So I now have a few newbie questions about vidding on a Mac.

1. I have my clips from that I ripped on Windows and they're in .mpg and I know that I have to convert them for them to work in Imovie. What's the best program to do that with?

2. To get new clips, from what I've read there's a few different options for ripping a DVD...but I don't want the full episode that I'd get from the DVD, I just want a section of it (at most say 5 minutes) and the thought of having a bunch of full episodes saved on my computer makes me queasy. Is there a program that will just rip clips of an episode without having to have the whole episode ripped onto your computer?

I'd love it if the programs were free but...

Also, I'm not the best with all the technical stuff (my eyes glaze over a bit)