Creative Communities of the World Forums

The peer to peer support community for media production professionals.

Activity › Forums › Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy › what settings for import into final cut pro?

  • what settings for import into final cut pro?

    Posted by Michael Leski on April 14, 2011 at 10:50 pm

    Hi all,

    I’m hoping to get an answer to the below question as my long and stranded journey on numerous forums has led to no answers…

    I’m new to final cut pro – changing horses from sony vegas after purchasing a new macbook pro. I’m using a sony hdr-hc1 video camera and record in hd. When capturing into sony vegas, i’ve had a setting on my camera to convert hd into sdv and I was using this as editing hd on my xp based pc was impossible.

    My question is (as the choice for formats and codecs.settings, etc is really daunting in fcp) what should I set my project as (as in what settings) to smoothly edit on my macbook pro in order to output the film on a dvd. Needless to say I’m interested in obtaining the best picture quality possible as the film I’m about to edit is my friend’s wedding. I’m based in the UK so I’m assuming it’ll be PAL but at this stage with seeing so many tutorials I’m confused…

    Huge thanks in advance for the help on this one. I really hope I can start promptly and produce something truly special.

    Best regards,

    Michael Leski

    Michael Leski replied 15 years, 4 months ago 2 Members · 5 Replies
  • 5 Replies
  • Chris Tompkins

    April 14, 2011 at 11:40 pm

    Well, what does your camera shoot?
    1080/50i ?

    Try using an easy setup that matches what you shoot.
    FCP choices are daunting at first, but that fades.

    What model cam do you have?

    Chris Tompkins
    Video Atlanta LLC

  • Michael Leski

    April 15, 2011 at 3:55 pm

    Hi,

    Thank you so much for the reply. My camera records in 1080i and I’ve noticed that it is written on the side of the camera NTSC.

    The camera model is sony hdr-hc1.

    Thanks soooo much for all the help!

    Michael Leski

  • Chris Tompkins

    April 15, 2011 at 4:48 pm

    Easy, So choose the HDV 1080i setup.
    Hook to comp via FW before you launch FCP.
    It will read the cam and load footage in.

    HDV is not a great codec to work with so it’s recommended you convert to ProRes upon ingest.

    Chris Tompkins
    Video Atlanta LLC

  • Michael Leski

    April 15, 2011 at 10:51 pm

    Hi Chris!

    Thank you again for devoting time to my thread. And many thanks for the advice! Brilliant:) The wedding is tomorrow and I’m all set up:) Then it’s back home, sleep and starting to edit:)

    I’ll feedback on the imports – can’t edit yet as I’m awaiting the lead I had to buy online for importing on the macbook pro I’ve got (4 pin to 9 pin firewire-pretty interesting that I only found one online – Apple don’t have it in their store, PC world nope, Currys nope, Comet nope, Malpin Electronics nah.., God bless the intenret:)

    Thank you again again and again!

    Can’t wait to take the plunge into FCP – Have gone through Lynda’s training and feel pretty confident to start big time now.

    Hope the result will be as good as I anticipate:)

    All the best!

    Michael Leski

  • Michael Leski

    May 15, 2011 at 2:49 pm

    Hi again,

    My mind is overloaded with info on forums and I don’t get a thing anymore.

    So I have edited the film in FCP (using sony hd camera hdr-hc1e, 1080 50i, editing was done on the material in the native format settings), exported the film as a reference, and not self-contained (should I?)
    Then Opened compressor and compressed the material into m2v according to best settings for a up to 90mins DVD.

    The first problem is I was trying to use iDVD which does not like the m2v so that’s a dead end. Tried the original quicktime film exported in iDVD but the DVD that burnt with it was awful quality.

    Any other software apart from DVD Studio Pro (which I cannot buy separately)that will like m2v?

    The second problem is I used Toast Titanium to see what my m2v would look like when burnt onto a DVD but this was only to test the quality as I do need to be able to do scene selection menu…
    And then when I played the DVD on my tv it was not good quality. Not what I expected at least especially that the hd from the camera looked crisp when editing was done. Again, terrible when played.

    What am I doing wrong? I’m so disappointed at this stage I’m ready to cry. My mind’s blowing from the info online which was of no use so far.

    PLEASE HELP!

    Michael

    Michael Leski

We use anonymous cookies to give you the best experience we can.
Our Privacy policy | GDPR Policy