DNxHD

Has anyone used the Avid DNxHD LE codecs in FCPX on OSX Lion and found this issue and a good way round it?

I shot some footage at 1440x1080 24p HDV (60i with pulldown) on a Sony HDR FX1000.

The un-flagged pulldown removal, and conversion to 1920x1080 square pixels was done successfully in Adobe After Effects on a PC around 1 year ago, at the time I also done an edit on Avid MC5 (also on a pc) and all went well.

I just installed the Avid DNxHD LE codecs and imported the footage into FCPX with no transcoding to optimised or proxy media, but it displays at 2.35:1. The inspector says 1920x1080 but it obviously isn't seeing the pixels as square.

I also tested optimising on import with a clip and the same problem exists.

I can stick this in a 1920x1080 square pixel project and set the timeline clips "Spatial Conform" to "Fill" and edit away, but I'd rather get to the bottom of the issue. If I could interpret the footage in the inspector I wouldn't bother but FCPX doesn't do that.

So FCPX says 1920x1080, but displays 2.35:1

QT Player X displays 2.35:1 but just says "Current Size 1,920 x 810 pixels" which is obviously because it is being displayed at the largest it can to fit on my 1920x1080 display.

QT Player 7 displays at and says "2560 x 1080 pixels" for current and actual size.

And Media Inspector says 1920 x 1080 with a display aspect ratio of 2.35:1.

Any thoughts?

Avid's DNxHD is not natively supported by FCP officially. Don't know that it ever was. No clue how to fix that for an unsupported format. Just transcode it to ProRes 422 and be done with it.

help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0.4/#ver2833f855

Avid's DNxHD is not natively supported by FCP officially

The problem isn't with FCPX, it seems to be in OSX as the issue is other places too. But today I looked at another project from around the same time, which followed the exact same workflow and everything is fine in OSX and FCPX. So it's a bit mysterious.

Just transcode it to ProRes 422 and be done with it.

I stuck all the clips in compressor and done that so I could get on with what I'm doing, but I'm not a "be done with it type of guy", I like to know what's going on with things and where problems are.

So I'm still open to thoughts.

Seems to me that there is an issue with the anamorphic flag being properly acknowledged either with FCPX or as imported with QT AV foundation. Might be worth a google on that topic....I'll look to see where I read that.

You might have read it here. It came up very recently.

Yes, Tom...I think you're right. I also believe Creative Cow had some discussion on that too.

Thanks I'll search around and look further into that. I remember reading recently about problems with FCPX wrongly interpreting non square pixels from sources captured outside FCPX.

Is this is what you mean? If so it could be a different issue, the clips are 1920x1080 square pixels and the problem exists outside FCPX.

Yes, Dave...I believe that was the topic.

Thanks, I'll have a look and see if I can find anything that could relate the problems tomorrow.