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Any way to read a FCP Movie File on a PC?
Afternoon all. Been a lurker on this site for some time, but this is the first time I’ve been stumped enough to need to post (sure it won’t be the last, either!)
My query… is there any way to get a windows PC to handle QuickTime movies exported from Final Cut? These are videos exported using the “Export>QuickTime Movie” rather than “Export>using QuickTime Conversion” option.
The reason I want to know is because we keep a backup of all our master programmes in FCP Movie File format (They’re quick to export, have a low filesize and aren’t lossy), but we have a PC which we use for conversion to different filetypes as needed.
I can’t get them to open in any Adobe software however, so is there any way I can get them to read on a Windows PC (codecs/plugins etc) without re-exporting them?
Cheers,
Adrian -
3 Replies
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I am going to hazard a guess here that the movie is using the Apple ProRes codec, which you do not have for your PC.
You can download the https://support.apple.com/downloads/Apple_ProRes_QuickTime_Decoder_1_0_for_Windows ‘>Apple ProRes Decoder for Windows but I have a word of warning for you:
The Apple ProRes decoder for Windows may induce a small gamma shift when you import a ProRes Quicktime on your PC. It will play back correctly on a Mac and I think this is due to the gamma difference between Apple displays and PC displays.
Apple will be changing their default gamma in Snow Leopard, due out this fall. They may update the decoder for Windows or they may update the Windows Quicktime player when they release Quicktime X for the Mac (which is 64-bit) with Snow Leopard.
So try that codec with the caveat on gamma. If you can import without using broadcast-safe color filtering, you may be able to minimize the gamma shift slightly. It gets worse if you use broadcast-safe color filtering.
What if there were no hypothetical questions?
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You can also try this little trick before import:
Vince Becquiot
Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area -
As a reminder, with CS4, you can import entire FCP projects including ProRes into Premiere Pro. If that’s your goal, don’t torture yourself, just export your FCP XML and move the media over to the PC (MacDrive is very nice for this) and open it up in Premiere Pro. The note about the decoder is probably not necessary assuming you have a newer version of quicktime.
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