I searched and couldn't find a definitive answer.

Question, I have footage shot in 720p 30fps with an HVX200 on P2 cards. The file extension is .mxf
Prores doesn't seem to be available in FCE. What is the best format to convert to edit? I have read that .AIC may be the best file extension. The computer is an Imac with 3gigs of ram, so keep that in mind.

Also, I noticed the .mxf files that we offloaded seperated into seperate audio and video files and didn't link them in anyway. Even the name of the files seem to be different. Does that sound normal? Anyone know a good way to match them back up without having to listen to every sound clip and try to match it?

Thank you!

Try this link for the P2 workflow:

http://images.apple.com/pro/pdf/L317074A_FCP_Wkflw.pdf

The P2 workflow document will not be helpful to Caleb since he is using Final Cut Express, not Final Cut Pro.

Your choices for editing DVC Pro HD files (which is the codec the HVX records to for 720p footage) in FCE are pretty much limited to AIC (if FCE will even transcode DVCPro HD footage, which I am not sure it will), since as far as I know FCE does not support DVC Pro HD or ProRes. AIC is not the most robust codec unfortunately -- if you are going to be editing a lot of HD footage other than HDV, you might want to consider upgrading to FCP for it's support of the codecs you will likely want to use.

Does the FCE user guide not cover these matters?

Good luck,
Kevin

thanks.

Kevin, your right. The manual probably does address it, but the machine is in a different location than I am/was at the time of posting. We are going to upgrade to FCP. But that won't be for a few months.

We are using FCE to edit a 4 minute music video.

The P2 workflow document will not be helpful to Caleb since he is using Final Cut Express, not Final Cut Pro.

Your choices for editing DVC Pro HD files (which is the codec the HVX records to for 720p footage) in FCE are pretty much limited to AIC (if FCE will even transcode DVCPro HD footage, which I am not sure it will), since as far as I know FCE does not support DVC Pro HD or ProRes. AIC is not the most robust codec unfortunately -- if you are going to be editing a lot of HD footage other than HDV, you might want to consider upgrading to FCP for it's support of the codecs you will likely want to use.

Does the FCE user guide not cover these matters?

Good luck,
Kevin

Oops! I somehow overlooked that tidbit ... sorry.

anyone have insight into why the footage offloaded is not linked to audio?

I figured it out.

So if you want to edit .mxf files in FCE you have to convert it to Apple intermediate codec. When doing this in Quicktime, on the bottom left of the screen you'll see a place to select 720p/1080p/1080i etc.
Select this and convert! Then you will be able to drage and drop to timeline for edit.