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Activity Forums Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy I am a failure

  • Posted by Stephen Fischer on January 26, 2010 at 12:03 am

    Okay, my story goes like this: we shot a ton of footage that is: 960×720 DVCPRO HD (720p60)

    I have final cut pro 5 but to try and save time clipping the footage down I bought a version of Final Cut Express HD so by brother could cut down the footage. I could have swore there was a message when I imported to optimize the sequence settings.

    There was some render time on some files.

    When we did a “export quicktime movie” current settings it rendered out as a DV NTSC 640×480.

    If i do an “item properties” on the subclips in the browser they show as 720×480 Compressor: DV/DVCPRO NTSC, as does the sequence itself.

    I tried opening the sequence in FCP5 but apparently it’s to old to be compatible.

    There is so much footage… is there anything I can do to get these back to HD? I mean the source files still are. If not in Final Cut Express if I found someone with a fCP 6 or 7 would their version be able to read the sequence and then is there a way to undo what I did?

    I don’t even know what I did, but I did it hard.

    Thanks in advance. Steve

    Steve Eisen replied 16 years, 7 months ago 5 Members · 4 Replies
  • 4 Replies
  • Walter Biscardi

    January 26, 2010 at 3:39 am

    [steve fischer] “I have final cut pro 5 but to try and save time clipping the footage down I bought a version of Final Cut Express HD so by brother could cut down the footage. I could have swore there was a message when I imported to optimize the sequence settings.”

    Express doesn’t support DVCPro HD.

    [steve fischer] “There is so much footage… is there anything I can do to get these back to HD? I mean the source files still are. If not in Final Cut Express if I found someone with a fCP 6 or 7 would their version be able to read the sequence and then is there a way to undo what I did?”

    No clue if the Sequence would read correctly or not. Certainly your frame size is going to be off so you’ll need to fix that.

    Walter Biscardi, Jr.
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    Biscardi Creative Media

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  • Shane Ross

    January 26, 2010 at 4:23 am

    What Walter said…FCE doesn’t support DVCPRO HD. A little research on that would have saved a lot of headache in this matter.

    [steve fischer] “There is so much footage… is there anything I can do to get these back to HD? “

    Everything you did in FCE will have to be redone. There is no way to make the DV footage HD again. You’ll have to get another copy of FCP and then redo the cutdown. And look up MEDIA MANAGER in the manual, so that you can retain the original metadata of REEL and TIMECODE. Exported footage will lack this, and therefore if you need to match to the original footage (recapture) then you’d be in even more trouble.

    Shane

    GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
    Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

  • Andy Mees

    January 26, 2010 at 6:26 am

    Hi Steve

    Before you throw yourself off the nearest bridge you may want to simply try opening your brother’s FCE project file using your copy of FCP … as long as the version of FCE you were using is not newer than the version of FCP you are using then you should be able to do that. If that’s a problem then you could see if someone else were able to open that file for you in their newer version of FCP and then pass you back a version of the project in a format that your setup will be able to open. Once you have the original project open in FCP then you should be able to adjust the sequence settings to match the original source format and reconform the sequence’s clip instances properties to properly match the original source/new sequence properties (ie remove any auto scaling and/or distortion that may have been applied). From there on in you should be back on track. Sounds like a long winded process but in practice its not too bad, and at the end of the day it’ll either have worked (yippee) or not (bugger), but either way no harm in trying.

    Hope it helps
    Andy

  • Steve Eisen

    January 26, 2010 at 1:20 pm

    Steve

    You need to purchase Shane’s DVD: Getting Organized in FCP.
    https://store.creativecow.net/p/63/getting_organized_in_final_cut_pro

    This may lead you on a good path to starting your project.

    Steve Eisen
    Eisen Video Productions
    Vice President
    Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

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