FCP – Media 100 NTSC

[Sean Oneil]

I hate to be a jerk and lecture you, but as someone who edited on Media 100 for 10 years, you’ve only scratched the surface as far as how far they go to put restrictions on what users can achieve. Switching to Final Cut has been the smartest move our studio has ever made.

Now that’s out of the way, two ways to solve your problem.

1. Forget Media 100 and start using FCP. You’ll never look back :).

2. Download the Media 100 software codec for Quicktime. Capture the DV in Final Cut and export a QT file with the Media 100 codec that you just downloaded. M100 used to not provide a software codec as this would have conflicted with their Draconian business model. They only had a transcoder which lets you read media but not create it. About 5 years too late (and too little) I believe they have one now.

Use the opition “Export to Quicktime Movie” in Final Cut. Then copy it over and it should import very quickly. You’ll have to manually add what the timecode is supposed to be. You can do this with M100 but I don’t remember exactly how. I think you just have to change the name of the media to a starting timecode number. Look at your other media files to figure out what the naming format is.

Sean

[Jack Shepard]

Thanks for all the replies everyone!

I do indeed need to switch over. FCP has totally passed Media100 and the restrictions you run into in today’s world with it are getting to be a huge hurdle. I love M100’s interface and like you have been using it for so long you just know it backwards and forwards and it’s tough to switch. This is one of those projects though which is not a good one to switch on — too many deadlines, too much footage, and the actual editorial itself fits well with my m100 knowledge. Also unfortunately doing the dailies over is not an option — as it was done well before my entrance into the project.

Let me ask you this question… in order to skip the step where I convert the FCP quicktime with the M100 codec is it possible when loading the footage into FCP and digitize with the M100 codec already in place. If that makes sense. It gives it as an option in the capture menu under the different compressors you can use. That way it would automatically do the quick load into M100. I gave it a try and it works for a few seconds and then seems to stall…. I wonder if there is a setting I can switch or if this codec is only for exporting purposes.

[Sean Oneil]

No it probably won’t work. If you have SDI out of your DV deck, you might be able to do this using the Decklink Deck Control which is a capture utility seperate from Final Cut. It lets you choose any Quicktime codec you want to capture to. AJA might have a similar utility. However, it usually crashes and locks up if you stray from the Final Cut supported codecs. For example, I’ve tried to capture straight to Animation, as well as H264. And neither of them worked.