[Will Wickert]

Ok, I actually just batch converted all the clips to Apple Pro Res with MPEG Streamclip and reconnected my clips in the timeline to the new Pro Res files. Unfortunately the Pro Res files are now taking up 16 GB of space on my hard drive vs the 1.3 GB of space the original files are taking up altogether, and now the time line needs to be rendered before it will even play back at all. According the the render progress box, it will take the 10 minute time line here between 1-2 hours to fully render, just to preview my rough cut.

Oh well, so much for the convenience of tapeless media with a small lightweight handheld. I just don’t have the time to to do all this conversion, recompression, and rendering just to be able to edit some small little AVC/h.264 clips together in FCP. Looks like I’ll have to rely on iMovie to make my edits on these types of clips and start shopping around for a small hand held that produces tapeless media that is more efficient with FCP or just revert back to a tape recording camera. Even logging and capturing from tape was a faster work flow than what I’ve been dealing with here with these AVC clips.

[Will Wickert]

Tom,

Thanks for the response. I tried the Log and Transfer method initially before but the Log and Transfer window would not let me select any files or folders. The files themselves were all faded, and if I tried selecting the whole folder, I would get a Warning message saying:

“100SANYO”(or whatever the name of the folder containing the media is) contains unsupported media or has an invalid directory structure. Please choose a folder whose directory structure matches supported media.

I then copied all the files onto an external firewire drive and tried Log and Transfer off that to import the files and still wasn’t able to select any files or successfully select the folder.

So I just did a standard import (File>Import) from the external drive and the files imported into my browser panel just as any other media file and they all playback with little to no hesitation in the viewer when I’m setting my in and out points. It’s just after inserting all the clips onto the timeline and playing the timeline that I get a 1-2 second delay at each cut.

I’m all new to this MPEG-4 AVC/h.264 work flow and have been finding that all the clips may need to converted to a more FCP friendly format such as Pro Res before bringing them into the editor. The strange thing is, I can edit these clips and play back the resulting time line in iMovie 09 just fine, no delays or hang up whatsoever. Of course, I’d rather use FCP to edit because it’s generally much faster and more fun to edit with, given the keyboard shortcuts, more traditional GUI, and all the other capabilities it offers.

-Will