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hard drive camera importing problem
Hello to all,
Combing quickly trough the forums, and a little confused about how to do something, I need information concerning hard-drive camera footage.
This past weekend, I taped a music festival that took 4 hours on mini DV tape. My second cameraman cancelled the day before, and I was forced to use another person who was shooting with a hard-drive style camera, doing cutaways of crowds, etc. (non-lip sync style cutaways).
His camera was simply a consumer model (Sony DCR SR-300) in 16:9. Since it didn’t have a firewire port, I used the USB port to copy the files onto my desktop of my G4. I did not find a way that Final Cut Pro 5 could log and capture these MPEG4 style files.
I read where MPEG Streamclip is what I needed. It has been stated that it was a FREE ap. I did so, but am confused about several things. (1) It seemed to indicated that I would need to download a driver for my my system. (2) It said that it if I have a Mac G4, I would need to download the lastest driver DC30 Xact Driver. I go to download this driver, and it says it is not fully compatible with FCP 5. It goes on to say that this software requires a video capture card. It also says I will need an MPEG2 component to play it, but not so if you have FCP 5, but an upgrade only from Apple. And the user guide is confusing to me also. So what do I do?
I simply want to to be able to edit hard drive camera footage in FCP 5, along side miniDV tape.Can this be done?
Thanks for all suggestions or pointers in the right direction.
Jonny CatesJonny Cates
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4 Replies
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You might try “handbrake.” It’s pretty easy to find and free. It works the same way as MPEG-streamclip. Might solve your driver issues.
Josh
Digital Media, Thought Equity Motion
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A G4 with FCP 5 is going to struggle with this. It might be better to find someone with a more up to date Mac and FCP to do the conversion. However, you run the risk of quicktime backwards compatibility.
It would be a wise move to consider upgrading to FCP 6 although you may find the G4 is past its use by date. To keep up with these newer mp4 cameras you are being forced to chase later software and hardware I am afraid.
I don’t know that particular camera but if it has any analog outputs and you have a capture card (or via HDMI), you might be able to use the camera as a player and recapture in the codec that suits as an uncontrolled device.
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Thanks so much for your suggestion and opinion concerning my need to upgrade my hardware and software. When the times right, I will purchase a new Intel Machine.
In the meantime, I will try the analog conversion suggestion, perhaps that will work.
Thanks so much!Jonny
Jonny Cates
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Jonny,
The best way around this is to copy the entire contents of the sony HD folder (hopefully you copied the entire folder intact with directory structure) on your desktop to an external USB drive, make sure nothing else is on the drive.
Then start up FCP open log and transfer and it should find the files on the usb drive import them into fcp and you should be good to go.
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