Importing problems

[Zane Barker]

H.264 is NOT a editing codec you need to convert the video to a proper editing codec before bringing them into FCP.

The cow forums are full of posts on this. Please search them!

**Hindsight is always 1080p**

[Michelle Orpe]

Hi Zane

Thanks for your reply, I’ve only just joined and I’m useless on forums, you said that the forums are full of threads about this, I did look and couldn’t find any but what I did was write ‘problems with importing’ in the search and lots of things came up which were no good to me, I read quite a few which were completely different problems and thought there must be an easier way.

Any tips on how to use this forum as I have a feeling I shall be on here quite a lot lol

Cheers,
Michelle

Michelle Orpe
http://www.michelleorpe.com

[Andrew Rendell]

+1

ProRes is the codec of choice for FCP.

Clip 2 is High Def (HD), whereas the others are Standard Def (SD) so unless you’re actually making something in HD, I’d change that one to SD at the same time as changing the codec (it’ll take a little longer to convert but it’ll save time later).

P.S. I love the typo “Field Dominance: Nonce” – ROFL for obscure technical nerdiness reason (don’t worry about it).

[Zane Barker]

If all you typed in wa importing provide im not surprised you didn’t find an answer.

Your problem is not an importing problem it is a h.264 editing problem.

Surch that and you will find plenty of info. In fact there is another post just a few threads down relating to h.264 eding. It comes up multiple times a day.

**Hindsight is always 1080p**

[Michelle Orpe]

Thanks Andrew

It’s all very confusing 🙂 but I’m getting there slowly. So should I change my settings on FCP to prores then?
What is the easiest way to change a clip from HD to SD, somebody emailed me about what to do with the clips above, I right clicked them in the browser and exported as quicktime conversion and for clip 1 & 3 I changed to DV-PAL with size: PAL 720 x 576 4:3 and I’m currently doing the same for Clip 2 but with the size dimention PAL 720 x 576 16:9

Clip 2 has still got an hour to go but the first 2 worked great woohoo, this 2nd clip is going to still be in HD though (did you work that out because the frame size is 1920×1080 instead of 751×564 & 768×576 like the other two? Is that how you tell? so what do I do with the HD clip or will it change it automatically if my sequence is set to SD?

Thank you so much for your help I really appreciate it

Mich

Michelle Orpe
http://www.michelleorpe.com

[Michelle Orpe]

Ahh see it’s easy when you know what to look for, before you told me I had no idea it was an H.624 problem I just couldn’t get the footage to work.

Michelle Orpe
http://www.michelleorpe.com

[Andrew Rendell]

Yes indeed the frame size is the giveaway.

What will happen is when you put your first clip on the timeline, it will (probably) ask you whether you want to make the sequence settings the same as the clip settings. Assuming that your first clip is an SD one, click yes and you’ll have an SD sequence. Then when you edit a clip from the HD material into it FCP will automatically resize it to fit, so it’ll make it into SD.
N.B. SD can be either 4:3 or 16:9, so you’ll have to decide which one of them you want your sequence to be, then whether you want black bars and the whole of the picture or crop to fill the frame for whicherver pics are the other shape.