Monday, June 16th, 2008...4:26 am
Final Cut Pro/Quicktime Hell!
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Okay, so, yeah… not “hell” exactly. But definitely Heck. I’m in computer heck.
I’ve spent the last hour and a half on the phone–or more accurately, talking to my laptop’s screen–Skyping with various people in various offices at Apple Computers, trying to get one of them to explain to me how to make Quicktime Pro for Windows actually see the Quicktime files I’ve been trying to show it.
Here’s the deal. I went out this morning to buy a hard disk drive, so that I could give Suman, our behind-the-scenes transcriptionist, the raw Quicktime files generated by Final Cut Pro–in this way he should be able to view them with their timecode, to give us the ability to know just where in the clip a given quote appears.
(I learned about this magic trick on this page in Ken Stone’s Final Cut Pro site–an absolutely incredible resource.)
Great, right? Except that, after downloading Quicktime Player for Windows, and purchasing the Quicktime Pro for Windows key, and installing these on the nice new HP laptop Suman has borrowed (running XP Pro, Service Pack 3), we could open the files and view the timecode, and play the files, and listen to the audio, but there was no picture. Just a white screen.
Wrack Brain. Point wracked brain at internet’s collective wisdom (at load speeds sometimes as fast as a blazing 10.3KB/sec). Find nothing. Aw crap.
All of this while Suman–who is a normal social human being with a social life and a full-time job in which weekends are as precious as gold–is sitting beside me, listening quietly to me grumbling. And looking at his watch discreetly.
Finally, we resolve to put it all aside for now, and pick it up again later, after a call to AppleCare. Or several.
Several long Skype calls, dropped calls after long holds, etc. a nice guy (well, he started out to be a bit of an attitude case, but ended up being a nice guy) at Apple’s Pro Applications Support was able to tell me that the reason I can’t see the video on the Windows box is that the box doesn’t have the gubbins to read “Apple Intermediate Codec”, which is evidently what Final Cut evidently uses to capture HDV footage with.
So it’s quite natural that they’d play on a Mac but not on a PC. Codec, schmodec, I say. Just make the darn thing work. Please?
So I’m now watching that selfsame Windows box try to download DivX, a 19MB file, at Hotel Tibet’s special midnight speed of 6.8KB/sec. Am I mistaken, or is that like one eighth of classic dial-up speed of 56.6KB/sec? Holy crap it’s slow. Halfway through, 20 minutes remaining.
I hope it works. Hope hope hope.
+++++
Update on DivX… Negatory. It’s 2:23pm as I write. Now downloading a trial of NeoHDV, with great hope shimmering in my tired eyes.
Some online discussion has led me to believe I might be hoping against hope. One very smart sounding Brad Ford, of QuickTime Engineering made some thorough (if disappointing) answers to questions similar to mine back in January.
It seems HDV is not a codec supported under Quicktime, but rather as a special ‘pro’ node buried under the hood of Final Cut. I’m out of my depth here.
It is my hope now that the time since January will have brought a few developers forward to create something to enable Windows and Apple and HDV and Apple Intermediate Codec to communicate smoothly.
[...]
3:00 AM. NeoHDV-No love. Might have to give this one up and give the camera back to Suman.
Final answer: There is, to the very best of my knowledge, currently no way to get a Window machine display HDV originated Final Cut Pro capture files with their timecode intact. Who knew HDV would be such a pain. Makes me wish we were shooting plain old DV.
5 Comments
June 16th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
OK, this is probably a dumb question…but can you let him use one of your macs? Or somehow find him a mac to use?
Amy I wish I was at your sleepover party. Wow.
June 16th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Yes, I HATE HDV.
You could also just compress the files to SD using Compressor and then export as a Quicktime file right? The footage will most likely look terrible but if all you need is for your patient friend to view them, that should be fine right?
You can also burn a time code onto that footage in FCP. Just make sure that 00:00:00 lines up on the tape and the burn.
I’ve been struggling through HDV woes recently, feel free to email me if you need advice.
Good luck!
Trip
June 16th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Trip–
Yeah, it’d be a cinch to drop a timecode overlay on the timeline for each tape, and output it in a fashion that would be readable by any number of players…
…only trouble is we have some 20 tapes, and no matter how I slice it, re-encoding each of these would require 2-4 hours each (exactly what I’m trying to avoid).
It’s a lousy craftsman that blames his tools, but I’m not in love with HDV either.
June 17th, 2008 at 6:10 am
I wonder if there is a low-fi solution? Like buying a cheap-ass consumer grade HDV camcorder and converting it into a deck? Or renting a camera and dubbing to VHS–later converting the deck counter times to timecode (assuming of course that your timecode runs continuous from zero)? Or perhaps, and I cringe saying this, accepting the fact that you will have no picture and just exporting the tapes as audio files? Surely this will be quicker, no? Far from ideal, but at least a quick fix until you narrow down your soundbite selects. No matter what you choose, you might consider encouraging your translator to do a quick pass of paraphrases or thematic summaries first, noting the location of things they find particularly interesting. This way, you can chat about what you’ve got so far and what this might suggest about things you still need to get. The more specific word-for-word uber-accurate translation can wait till later. Maybe until the selects stage, or at least until you get a better look at the picture.
My 2 cents,
CB
June 21st, 2008 at 2:09 am
WE HAVE A WINNER! Chris Boulton, Come on down! We’re going back to our original system of having Suman use our second camera, and HV20. It’s not ezzackly cheap ass (but it is a lovely little camera that makes brilliant HDV images, and is only a little hobbled by the cheap-assiness of being a consumer palmcorder).
We thought of using just the Quicktime audio files, and this seemed somewhat sensible. But then we looked over the transcripts and saw just how much illumination his notes on the visuals were providing the log (and how much they were helping him to grok the context) and thought better of it.
On the quick-pass paraphrase thing? Love it, in theory. However…1) Translator doesn’t really know what’s interesting; 2) We’re down to the wire, timewise; 3) Any ‘later’ options will likely involve retaining someone in the states, which will be far more expensive than here; and 4) Brother, thank you so much for your thoughtful reply!
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