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Multiple file formats, DVD’s and other importing woes
Hello all!
It has been a few years since I dusted off FCP and now having the latest Final Cut Studio 2 (which is about to be FC3, go figure) I am finding myself a little out of my element.
Basically I have a project that I need to do for Broadcast SDTV and the principal footage has been captured in SONY Vegas and then mailed to me as .AVI files. To make matters more interesting, a good chunk of footage has to come off of an already burned DVD.
My basic question is what is the best way to go about bringing the footage in and the best way to export it all with minimal quality loss. I have used Streamclip to bring in the DVD footage and the .AVI footage seems to be working fine, but I am not sure of the best way to export it.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks so much!
– Jonathan
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5 Replies
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MPEG Streamclip is the best way to go for everything. I would convert everything (the DVDs and the AVIs) to Quicktime files in the proper parameters for FCP to natively work with it with no conversion or rendering. I run into a lot of situations where clients have footage from all sorts of sources (FLV, WMV, etc.), and this seems to always work best. You may have to download Perian to get the AVI files to import (it’s free).
I would create a preset for the following settings for Export Quicktime:
Compression: Apple DV/DVPRO – NTSC
Quality: 100%
Sound: Uncompressed, Stereo, 48 kHz
Frame size: 720 x 480 (DV-NTSC)
Frame rate: 29.97
Interlaced Scaling: Checked
Reinterface Chroma: Checked
Field Dominance: Lower Field First
(Leave all other boxes unchecked and leave the rotation, zoom, and crop settings alone)That should give you nice (but big) .mov files that FCP will handle like a champ. Hope this helps!
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Awesome. Thanks so much!
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In some FCP systems, FCP 6.0.x with QT 7.6.x, I’ve noticed MPEGStreamclip doesn’t open VOB or MPEG files saying the MPEG-2 component needs updating. The link given takes you to Apple store to buy the MPEG component for $ 20. The link it takes you to is
https://www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2/faq.htmlThis doesn’t happen on all systems.
Does anyone have a workaround to this – other than buying the component? And, after buying the component, does MPEGStreamclip work?
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Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India -
I had the same problem with this mpeg 2 playback component. My deadline was too tight to risk hunting down free alternatives so I’m afraid I bit the bullet and bought mpeg2 playback component from the apple store. installed within 30 seconds and I was good to go. It worked just fine after that. If you’re being paid for the job, and the only source format you’re given for the material is DVD then you are perfectly entitled to invoice your employer for the cost of the component. That’s what I did. If it’s a personal project, money’s tight and time isn’t an issue by all means seek alternatives. I’d love to hear about them.
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Hi there,
Your post was very helpful. I am converting a bunch of FLV files that I downloaded from ustream.tv to MOV files. They are terribly crappy videos and vacillate between 5 to 25 FPS. I found no info on how to convert them to friendly files for FCP, so I ran a bunch of tests. This is the final and friendliest settings to convert ustream.tv FLV to MOV files using MPEG Streamclip so you can edit them in FCP without rendering issues and major stalls:
Compression: H.264
Quality: 100%
Sound: Uncompressed, Stereo, 48 kHz
Frame size: 640 x 480
Frame rate: 29.97
Interlaced Scaling: Checked
Reinterface Chroma: Checked
Field Dominance: Lower Field First
(Leave all other boxes unchecked and leave the rotation, zoom, and crop settings alone)
You can reduce the saturation to 89.3 if your vids get too saturated as mine did.This should give you nice (and not huge) .mov files that FCP will really love. Making them any bigger isn’t necessary. See ya.
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