h264 footage won't play

Hi all,

bit of a weird one here - I've got some 720p footage from a Contour 2+ helmet cam, which plays absolutely fine in Quicktime etc, but in FCPX 10.1 it either is completely blank, or it plays a few frame and then stops. Audio seems fine.

Unfortunately I don't have the files here with me, but I know that they're h264 at least. From this thread (where someone is having exactly the same problem) it seems like they're :
Kind: QuickTime movie
Dimensions: 1920 x 1080
Codecs: H.264, Linear PCM, Timecode
Audio Channels: 2
29.97fps

As suggested in that thread, I tried to transcode them (optimised and proxy) but I still have exactly the same problem. The transcodes play absolutely fine in QT if I locate them manually.

Any ideas? This is very frustrating. Thanks!

My next step would be to try using Compressor to transcode to ProRes 422 and import that to FCPX.

Ian.

Just curious: Did you import media through 10.1 and select optimize media on import?

How did you get the files into FCPX? Did you drag them into the event or through the import window? I ask because some footage is spanned and needs to be stitched together which doesn't happen with drag and drop.

Gopro footage is notorious for being unfriendly even though it's h.264. If it's anything like that I had to transcode in the past.

Hi all,

Thanks for the replies!

I imported using the import window, and no, I didn't select optimise media on import - I manually selected it afterwards. I can try again, if this might help?

I can buy Compressor I guess - but it does seem slightly ridiculous if I need to do this, given that Quicktime can play the footage without any problems.

What's weird is the footage I had from this camera in the past was absolutely fine ... so it seems like updating to 10.1 might be to blame. I read in another thread that updating the firmware on the camera could stop this happening in the future (so presumably it is at least partially a problem with the camera too)... and unfortunately the camera wouldn't reboot after the firmware update and now appears to be trashed (and the company that now own Contour don't seem to have functioning support dept. at the moment).

This has been a slightly expensive and annoying experience so far!

Cheers,

Ed