• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  Converting Canon 550d footage for FCE + FCE settings

  Posted by Robert Sea on October 17, 2012 at 7:11 pm

  Hey everyone

  Straight to the point, I’m making a music video in Final Cut Express & the deadline for it is nearing. The video was shot on a Canon 550d w/ class 10 32GB Extreme HD Video SD card. I put all the footage into a folder on my desktop via card reader then from there I imported it into FCE.

  Here are the shooting details according to QT Movie Inspector:

  Canon 550d
  H.264, 1920 x 1080, Millions
Linear PCM, 16 bit little-endian signed integer, 2 channels, 48000 Hz
  FPS: 25
  Data Rate: 44.88 Mbit/s
  Date Size: 344.7 MB
  Current Size: 1440 x 810 pixels

  I exported a small clip from FCE as a test because I was wondering about whether I had the settings correct.  I obviously had something wrong because it was coming out with weird lines all over the place. Have a look at that HERE.

  So anyways I started researching after the test clip came out terribly & have learnt that I’ve foolishly been editing the footage in its h.264 format in FCE, which requires constant rendering & is highly stressful!
  So I downloaded MPEG Streamclip to convert my footage. From what I’ve read, ProRes is the best format to go with, however it doesnt work with Final Cut Express (correct me if im wrong!) so I have to use Apple Intermediate Codec.

  Heres how I’ve got the settings in MPEG Streamclip:

  Compression: Apple Intermediate Codec
  Quality: 100%
  Frame Size: 1920 x 1080 (unscaled)
  Frame Rate: 25
  Frame Blending: OFF
  Interlaced Scaling: OFF
  Deinterlace Video: OFF

  These settings seem to match those that I shot with.

  So next I would import all my footage into FCE. Now here Im not sure what settings I need to have in ‘Easy Setup’. Here are my current settings:

  Format: Apple Intermediate Codec
  Rate: 25.00 FPS
  Use: HDV-Apple Intermediate Codec 1080i50

  Is this right?? Am I missing something somewhere?!

  Also when exporting videos out of FCE, I’ve always done File>Export>Using QT Conversion>Options:

  Compression: H.264
  Quality: High
  Frame reordering: Yes
  Encoding Mode: multi-pass
  Dimensions: 1920×1080

  I’ve since read that it is not wise to use the conversion option, but again, i dont really know.

  I pulled a clip into FCE that I had converted using MPEG Streamclip so i could test it. I put some keyframing on it & exported it to see if the same lines appeared when the image moved across the screen, and they did. So frustrating! It doesn’t seem to be too bad until screens start moving around etc.

  https://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b238/euoh/Screenshot2012-10-17at170704.png

  If anyone could help me out & let me know what settings ive got wrong, why the clips have these lines through them, & how i can stop it, that would be great! Any help is massively appreciated!

  Im an amateur as Im sure you’ve guessed, so my apologies if im doing something stupid without realising!

  Thanks for reading!

  Robert Sea replied 13 years, 10 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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