• Apple Final Cut Pro

  AVI importing, editing and compressing….. Why such an issue?

  Posted by Jolyon Hennings on November 3, 2011 at 8:23 am

  Hi,

  We have been happily using Adobe CS for many many years on PC’s. We have recently switched to MACPowerbooks as our laptops (for a number of reasons).
  We have found our self out on location needing to do a spot of editing. So quickly booted up FCPX.

  This is when it get a little weird. The Footage was captured to HD by our JVC. This was captured as AVI files. FCPX will only open three out of the five files (refuses to open the other two) seems to be no rhyme or reason to this. i.e. will open the 31GB one but not the 8GB one?

  Although it will open it then says there is a background operation running and will only show the first 180 seconds of the clip.

  So after a little bit of digging i discover FCPX does not support AVI files (seriously????!! is this MAC arrogance gone mad?). So bought COMPRESSOR in order to help out……..

  So input AVI of 180 (31GB) mins with output required as

  Width and Height: Automatic
  Pixel aspect ratio: Default
  Crop: None
  Padding: None
  Frame rate: (100% of source)
  Frame Controls: Automatically selected: Off
  Codec Type: H.264
  Multi-pass: On, frame reorder: On
  Pixel depth: 24
  Spatial quality: 50
  Min. Spatial quality: 50
  Temporal quality: 50
  Min. temporal quality: 50
  Average data rate: 10 (Mbps)
  Maximum data rate: 14 (Mbps)
  Audio Encoder
  Sample Rate: 44.100kHz
  Channels: 2
  Bits Per Sample: 16
  AAC encoder quality: high
  Data rate: 128 Kbps

  So why did it take 14 hours!!! I have a brand new MACbook PRO 2.2 Ghz Intel Core i7 with 4GB of memory.

  Just started the next one at 19GB one… ill let you know how long….

  Bill Davis replied 14 years, 10 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Rafael Amador

  November 3, 2011 at 4:23 pm

  why don’t you try to rewrap the AVI as QT?
  Open the AVIs with MPGStreamclip and “SAVE as ..QT”.
  No Picture or Audio processing needed.
  Really fast: The time to duplicate a file.
  rafael

  http://www.nagavideo.com
• 

  Bill Davis

  November 5, 2011 at 2:54 am

  So after a little bit of digging i discover FCPX does not support AVI files (seriously????!! is this MAC arrogance gone mad?).

  Unfortunately, “AVI” isn’t actually a “thing” itself. It’s a container shell for video. The video inside it can be any of a thousand variations of video and audio encodes featuring any of scores of codecs, data rates, compression schemes and variations thereof. So your idea that FCP-X should “support” AVI is unreasonable.

  Microsoft designed AVI in precisely the same way Apple designed QuickTime. As a general purpose wrapper.

  So if it’s MAC arrogance gone mad – then AVI is Microsoft arrogance gone equally mad.

  Video inside FCP-X is now optimized to use CoreAV services. Generally that supports a lot of useful video encoding “standards – but certainly not all. Many are patented by other entities and Apple can’t build in support without violating IP laws.

  Apple holds patent rights for some (ProRes comes to mind) Has access to others via partnership or consortium membership (H-264, etc.) but has to keep away from using others directly (Flash and Windows Media 9 or Silverlight, etc.) simply because without IP agreements in place they’d be violating others patents to do so.

  So sorry, but the problem here isn’t Apple “arrogance” at all . Its largely that you don’t understand the real issues around video playback technology in a modern NLE.

  Sorry.

  “Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

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