Editing tips please, import & long renders.

[Shane Ross]

[curious editor] “once I drag this footage on my timeline I have to render it and having 40mins of footage takes hours to render.”

That is a BIG HINT that things are wrong. You should not have to do that. What that means is that your sequence settings do not match your captured footage. Typically, in versions prior to FCP 6, you’d have to choose an Easy Setup (in the Final Cut Pro menu) that matches the footage you shot. DV/NTSC if you shot DV in America, DVCPRO HD 720p60 if you shot with the Varicam. Then you TRASH the existing sequence, and create a new one…because the existing one has the settings that were in place BEFORE you changed the Easy Setup.

In FCP 6, FCP will ask if you want to change the settings to match the clip settings that you are going to drop into it. FINALLY…because this other way is darn confusing.

[curious editor] “I’m now looking for a camcorder that has Compact flash or SD card recording capabilites but most of them record in MPEG4 and have no 24P frames. The reason I wanted to get a camcorder like this is to be able to send footage onto MAC faster and have more time to render once dragged into FCP.”

FCP has settings for MANY camera types, but MPEG-4…that is a very consumer format, and FCP doesn’t edit that natively. It will convert AVCHD into an editable format, like ProRes and AIC…but I don’t think it is compatible with MPEG-4 cameras.

[curious editor] “how do you edit with the most productivity?”

Choose the proper EASY SETUP that matches your shooting format…that’s one of the basics of FCP. And I typically LOG & CAPTURE…watching and labelling my footage so that I can easily find it later. And organization is the key. I do have a tutorial DVD that helps with this, but it assumes you already know the basics, and you seem to need to grasp those better. Check out the FCP tutorials…they are a wealth of info.

Shane

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[Curious Editor]

Thanks for the reply. The “DV/NTSC” in easy setup, I already knew that thank you but it still doesn’t solve my problem. Let’s say I download a .MOV file from a friend and I import it onto an empty timeline, I still have to render to playback.

For the camcorder, that is the reason I am not buying a card based camcorder but wished there was one that offered another compression aside from MPEG4. (I know this is a bad compression was what I was trying to say)

I do label and do 10 min batch captures.

My only beef(problem) is the rendering. To be able to playback any footage on the timeline and I don’t understand why FCP 5.1.4 needs a render while Adobe CS3 has an open timeline
that you can playback without rendering.

[Shane Ross]

[curious editor] “Let’s say I download a .MOV file from a friend and I import it onto an empty timeline, I still have to render to playback.”

Well, that isn’t really the way to do things…but, if you must, there is this handy tip:

https://web.mac.com/steelepro/iWeb/steelecuts.com/fcs%20detective/6FD1D5FD-0C56-4F06-992C-902D00556549.html

[curious editor] ”
My only beef(problem) is the rendering.”

That is because you are working with files that aren’t in an editing codec. Sure, you can edit them, but it isn’t optimal. FCP doesn’t do this because, well, it isn’t designed to. it is designed to work with many tape formats and editable codecs But, if Premiere does this, as Vegas does too, then you might be better suited using them. I am always saying use the edit software that accomplishes what you need. If FCP doesn’t do it, use something that does.

Shane

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