[Blair Golson]

I apologize. I didn’t read the original post carefully enough.

My fix was actually for people using 720p Sanyo Xacti cameras. I had written my post for elsewhere and pasted it here without reading the original closely enough.

But I have to ask: Is there really no alernative to transcoding my mp4 files to ProRes format? At best, that’ll increase my file sizes 10x. And I have to keep those source files if I want to re-edit, right?

So all of a sudden 20 GB of source material becomes 200 GB?

I know that external hard drives are relatively cheap, but still: A few projects like that are we’re talking Terabytes. Do I really have to buy a new 1 TB hard drive for every 2 or 3 projects?

[Blair Golson]

I’ve figured this out:

Two ways to do it:

(Note: I favor ‘Option B’)

Option A) Quick but creates HUGE files on your hard drive

Download MPEG Streamclip and transcode your files into any of the ProRes formats (which are all .MOV). Then import them into FCP. The playback delays will be gone (as FCP loves this format).

Benefits: Quick solution. Transcoding happens at 1x speed. (A 10-second clip takes 10 seconds to transcode)

Drawbacks: Transcoding to ProRes increases your file size by anywhere from 10-30x. (A 100 MB file becomes 1GB – 3 GB or larger) So unless you’ve working on a massive external hard drive, this will quickly become a problem. Not to mention that if you ever want to re-edit your project, you’ll have to keep those massive files in their massive state — forever.

Option B: Slower but doesn’t increase file size

This involves changing the pre-set settings of new sequences.

So NOTE: You can’t do this with existing sequences. You’ve got to start with a new sequence. (I may be wrong about this aspect, but I don’t know how to repair/change already-existing sequence settings in a way that will eliminate the playback lag)

1) FCP menu > Easy Setup
2) On the menu that appears, choose:
Format: Apple Intermediate Codec
Use: 720
Rate: 29.97
3) Create a new sequence
4) Edit a cut into the sequence
5) IMPORTANT: When you are prompted to change the sequence settings to match your clip, click NO. (If you click ‘Yes’ you’ll un-do everything you just did in steps 1-4)
6) Hit option/alt-R to render both the audio and video at the same time

Benefits: Doesn’t increase your movie clip sizes.

Drawbacks: The rendering process takes roughly 4x the clip length. So if you edited a 10-second clip into the sequence, it’ll take about 40 seconds to render.

Is this a pain? Yes. But I’ll take it any day over the need to fill up my hard drive with massive files (option A)

[Blair Golson]

I’ve figured this out:

Two ways to do it:

(Note: I favor ‘Option B’)

Option A) Quick but creates HUGE files on your hard drive

Download MPEG Streamclip and transcode your files into any of the ProRes formats (which are all .MOV). Then import them into FCP. The playback delays will be gone (as FCP loves this format).

Benefits: Quick solution. Transcoding happens at 1x speed. (A 10-second clip takes 10 seconds to transcode)

Drawbacks: Transcoding to ProRes increases your file size by anywhere from 10-30x. (A 100 MB file becomes 1GB – 3 GB or larger) So unless you’ve working on a massive external hard drive, this will quickly become a problem. Not to mention that if you ever want to re-edit your project, you’ll have to keep those massive files in their massive state — forever.

Option B: Slower but doesn’t increase file size

This involves changing the pre-set settings of new sequences.

So NOTE: You can’t do this with existing sequences. You’ve got to start with a new sequence. (I may be wrong about this aspect, but I don’t know how to repair/change already-existing sequence settings in a way that will eliminate the playback lag)

1) FCP menu > Easy Setup
2) On the menu that appears, choose:
Format: Apple Intermediate Codec
Use: 720
Rate: 29.97
3) Create a new sequence
4) Edit a cut into the sequence
5) IMPORTANT: When you are prompted to change the sequence settings to match your clip, click NO. (If you click ‘Yes’ you’ll un-do everything you just did in steps 1-4)
6) Hit option/alt-R to render both the audio and video at the same time

Benefits: Doesn’t increase your movie clip sizes.

Drawbacks: The rendering process takes roughly 4x the clip length. So if you edited a 10-second clip into the sequence, it’ll take about 40 seconds to render.

Is this a pain? Yes. But I’ll take it any day over the need to fill up my hard drive with massive files (option A)