G'day,

God I'm going insane...

FCP5.1 is unexpectedly quitting on me whilst trying to re-edit my showreel. Sequence is set to 960x540 pixels, square PAR, 25fps, XD-CAM codec. The footage I'm using is a combination of 2 things:

VOB files from my previous showreel (standard def) DVD - original format was 48k DV-CAM 4:3 25fps

&

Quicktime Movies of my last 3 projects, recorded on XD-CAM 1920x1080 25fps progressive.

I started this project last week, and experienced the same thing... Basically all will appear fine, til one day I open it up, scroll to a section of the 4:3 footage, and bang, it U/Q's on me.

I have:

Tried a different HDD
Deleted prefs
Deleted render files
"Saved as..."
Moved source files away then reconnected...

Some combination (or just stupid luck) of the above did allow me to export a 4 min version of my showreel (which some of you may have seen on my other thread), but now I've gone back in to re-edit it, it's again crashing on me.

Any other ideas what's going on here?

Thanks

cosmic

PS Why does Quicktime say the VOB files aer 720x540, but ffmpeg says they are 720x576? Which is correct, and is that why the DVD I've built suffers bad pixelation on the 4:3 footage? (ie because I've created a sequence that's 540 high, but it should be 576?)

PPS I am learning...

are you trying to edit vob files? please say no.

then run those vob files through mpegstreamclip and convert them to DV PAL

and make the sequence setting dv pal as well, if your final output is to as standard def dvd.

dont make fcp do any more work than it needs to.

realistically, if you're editing on the emac in your signature, then you cant go beyond standard def, regardless of what fcp might tell you.

Yes, and no. To all of the above.

I have run the VOBs through MPEGStreamclip, which gave me m2v and aiff files. That's what I've been using. I did then try using the VOBs themselves because it was crashing, but it made no difference.

I have already managed to edit some HD stuff on the eMac... it just takes about 1 hour per minute to render... The extra 512Mb I've just installed... hasn't really done anything.

If I re-convert the VOBs into DV-PAL... will FCP recognise the new files (in terms of the timeline I've already created using the m2v files), or do I have to re-cut them?

I've already started from scratch once (oh, that's right - that's how I got it to work last time after it kept crashing), and I'm anal enough to do it again if I need to..

fcp wont recognise the new file.. sorry dude.

Ah well, its all just time and experience really... :}

On a tangent relative to above...

So, I've followed your advice, set up 720x576 CCIR 601 DV PAL 5:4, which matches the SD DVD format...

Now is there a standard accepted approach for mixing 5:4 with 16:9 footage? Using this new format gives my widescreen footage black tops/bottoms, whereas I thought it looked nicer to have the 5:4 footage having side black bars... which would mean shrinking the 5:4 footage down...

Really should have hassled my lecturer about this earlier...