Importing .mov video to avid xpress pro hd

[Michael Hancock]

I didn’t answer before because I honestly don’t know if what you want to do will work. I’ve never used those cameras. But they record to .mov (quicktime) files, so there’s hope!

You can import quicktime movies into Avid without a problem. Because these cameras are recording to H.264 you might have problems, but probably not. The biggest issue is the transcode time–Avid going to take every clip from this camera and transcode it to MXF media (since you’re working in HD), and that will take a while. Definitely test this with your system to make sure it’s going to import correctly, and to get an idea of the import time you’ll be looking at. It might take so long to import one clip that you decide it’s just not worth it.

If you like the quality of the cameras but don’t like the import time, consider loading all the footage onto one (or several) systems and running each clip through a program like Sorenson Squeeze or ProCoder. If you transcode them to an Avid friendly codec (like the Avid codecs themselves) you’ll save an enormous amount of import time, and can work with your other footage while your transcode machine converts away.

You don’t list all the specs for your laptop, but it might run Avid. You can install Avid on as many machines as you want–just take your dongle along to run it. I installed Avid on my wife’s Dell laptop at home–it’s way out of spec and, in theory, never should have booted into the program but it did and it actually runs quite well. So try it–you might be surprised!

Let us know if you get a chance to test this and whether or not it works.

Good luck!

Michael.

[Richard Barber]

Thanks, Michael, that’s encouraging. I’ll try installing Avid onto my laptop tonight. I won’t be able to test the Aipteks until next week because my colleague already took them out of town to where we’re shooting, but I’ll try it out next week.

One question (from someone who’s not the most technically astute editor on the block): when you say: “consider loading all the footage onto one (or several) systems and running each clip through a program like Sorenson Squeeze or ProCoder” do you mean just load it all into a drive, then run each clip as described? The idea being that then I’ll have new clips that I might hope to import with less time and trouble into the Avid?

I’ll report back when I’ve tried some of this. At this point I’ll need to make it work one way or another, even if it means turning it into analog and back to digital again, though you’ve given me hope it won’t come to that.

Richard

[Richard Barber]

Here’s a case of (provisionally) answering my own question. I’m on location with my laptop, which turns out to have iMovie HD after all. I created a 1080i project and successfully imported 720p video from the Aiptek sd cards (it takes a long time, but they were short clips). So I’m assuming/hoping that when I return to my Avid Xpress HD I can copy these transcoded video files onto my Avid project. True?