We're using Snapz Pro X v 2.1.2 with quicktime v 7.4.5 to capture movies off the internet to be imported into Avid Mediacomposer for use in our TV show.
This works fairly well, except snapz always adds an extra 50% or so of a freezeframe to the end of the movie.

So for example, lets say we capture a 1 minute clip. The saved quicktime will be something like 1min 30 seconds, the last 30 seconds simply being a freezeframe of the last frame captured with no sound.

The main problem with this is that Avid Mediacomposer requires imported clips to be encoded in it's own format, and this takes quite a bit of time. We have a fast turnaround, and essentially this issue causes imports to take 50% longer.

Anyone know how we can avoid this?

Another thing I attempted to shorten our Avid import times is to install it's own codec on the Mac running Snapz. However Snapz doesn't seem to recognize this as a valid codec. Is this possible to do this at all, or does Snapz only have it's own codecs?

Many thanks for any help.

LP

Hello LP,
Sorry for your frustration. I am not aware of this same issue. Is the length of the last frame always relative to the length of the recording? Do you see this if opened in Quicktime as well, or only once imported into Avid?

The codecs are provided by Quicktime, as it is Quicktime doing the compression. I was was pretty sure that if the codecs are available in Quicktime, they would be available in Snapz. Do you see them in Quicktime when you export?

Yes, so a 20 second clip will have a 10 second or so freeze for example. This length appears in quicktime as well, it's not really related to Avid as such.
I assume somehow quicktime thinks the clip is meant to be longer than it is, and keeps encoding even though the clip is finished. I've tried to play around with framerates, but it doesn't help. We set Snapz to record 25fps, but the quicktime usually reports something else, usually 8-12fps. Not sure if Snapz just ignores the 25fps setting, but setting Snapz to a lower framerate doesn't make any difference to the length of the final quicktime.



No they don't appear in the quicktime settings when I export. We only have regular quicktime, not quicktime Pro, would that make a difference?
In any case I suspect using Avid codec will only really help if Snapz can scale up the video to the correct resolution.

LP

Do you have the same problems with the beta that was sent to you? Are you also recording audio. If so, does it make a different if you choose not record audio (just video)?