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Final Cut Pro 10.0.7 and GOPRO HERO 2
Gentlemen and ladies, I know this has been answered for FCP V7 (thats all I could find) but I need someone to help me make a decision whether to convert .MP4 to .MOV for FCPX, As stated above I have the 10.0.7 release, I also have Cineform that comes with the GOpro and the appropriate Codecs that come with it,
So before you comment and tell me that FCPX doesn’t support MP4 please read the fact that I have native .MP4 files from my GOPRO and they do seem to add into the event viewer and timeline ok so why would I need to either convert them using something like MPEG Streamclip or now in FCPX Import dialog where you can apply Transcoding and create Optimized media (which creates MOV files that are HUGE compared to their MP4 cousins – example, a 1280×960 MP4 for 12mins is 1.15GB and the same clip in MOV format is 11.29GB)
Basically I would like to know if FCPX 10.0.7 should be used with MP4 files like this and what the ramifications are to not converting ? I really dont want to have to expand my raw clips by almost ten fold just to edit them, surely I dont get any more quality out of them as just because the file is bigger doesnt mean you can make up information when it wasn’t there in the first place.
I am a newbie to video editing so please dont flame me for asking what may be a very obvious or cut & dried and well answered question.
Thanks
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5 Replies
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The MP4 files will work ok in FCPX but they’re not really an editing friendly format. If I’m in a rush, then I have edited with the original GoPro MP4 files but even on my late 2012 iMac it’s a bit clunky and slow. My advice would be to either use the Cineform Studio app to convert them – or let FCPX optimise the media when you import it – but bottom line: if it works for you, it’s the right way to do it.
Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland -
Jeff is right, FCPX will handle the native files just fine but depending on your machine they can be a bit sluggish. I never transcode them though!
Steve Connor
‘It’s just my opinion, with an occasional fact thrown in for good measure” -
Thanks Gentlemen – appreciate the feedback – may I ask you both the areas where you might see the system performing slowly and is this CPU bound or Video bound ? What sort of functions within FCPX would be affected by this file format.
Thanks again in advance for your time…
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It’s purely playback. Decoding MP4 takes a lot more processing power than decoding something like ProRes. FCPX will probably start dropping frames once you start doing colour correction or adding effects, etc.
It’s really does depend a lot on your system and personal preference. Hard drives are cheap so file space is pretty much a non-issue. It just comes down to whether you find the playback with dropped frames and the possible need to render more often annoying or not.
Ultimately what annoys me might be a non-issue for you so the best thing to do is start by trying editing with the native media. If you hit a bottleneck, go to the event and tell FCPX to optimise the clips and you’ll be good to go.
As always, the only right workflow in any situation is the one that gets the job done for you.
Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland -
Thanks so much for the reply – I will try it. I have a mac Pro with an i7 and 32GB RAM and a good video card so we will see if I get away with a Radeon 5870 so it has only ever complained once about dropped frames and I was doing a lot of other stuff at the time.
Thanks for the help you guys – so much nicer community than the PC / Server technical side of life 🙂
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