AVCHD problem with perian and FCP?

[James]

Hello,

Many using FCP are having problems capturing AVCHD video and I think
it may be related to Perian. You can review the following thread at
apple discussion groups for more information. My testing shows that
starting FCP with perian uninstalled causes the problem to go away.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1712136

Does anyone in the Perian project have any insight? It appears to only
be an issue after 10.5.5 is installed and 10.5.5 includes "extensive
graphic updates".

I have example videos and more information if anyone needs. please let
me know.

Thanks,

-James

[Alexander Strange]

I think the graphics updates means new video card drivers, which don't
really have much to do with Perian. Maybe QT 7.5.5 could have caused
it?
Anyway, is it possible to get AVCHD in a format that a normal player
will accept? I'd need that (or raw h264) before I could say anything.

We already refuse to decode interlaced H.264; if it's progressive that
could be a Perian/ffmpeg problem, but otherwise it's likely to be a
system thing. Not that I know which is better.

Oh, and maybe the changes to frame skipping in 1.1.1 will improve it.

[James Russo]

Hello Alexander,

I think it has something to do with QT, because this problem is not experienced with iMovie which does not use QT for the capturing of the video (or so I am told). The problem occurs with the actual capturing of a clip, so once it is captured the clip is already broken. For example, just viewing the clip in the Log and Transfer window shows a perfectly normal clip. But once you capture it and drop it on the timeline is when you see the jumpy video.

The best thing I can likely do is create a .dmg file of camcorder harddrive with just 5-10 seconds of video on it to keep the size small and provide it to you. You would obviously need FCP and a 10.5.5 machine to test this. Let me know if this would be useful.

I am not even sure that I can say it is related to the actual Perian code, but maybe something to do with how it is installed or integrated with QT which is the problem. I can say with that turning off Perian does resolve the issue for me and many others on the apple discussion board.

-jr