Final Cut pro problem. Need Help!
 

Thanks so much in advance! I transferred mpg files to my mac and when i import it and drag on to timeline it doesn't play back in like normal. It plays as a small box with black bordering. How can i fix this problem? It only happens to certain files I guess but they are all mpg. Once again, I thank you!

Eric Eugenio

FCP help
 

My guess is the clips that you improted were not full quality (hence why they do not fill the entire scree) if you still want to use them however there is a way. When the clip is in the slug, click on the third bubble which has a little border icon, select "image+wireframe" then you will be able to resize the clip by dragging the corner to the desired size. After that click on the same bubble with the border icon and select "image" so that you can then drag the clip into the timeline if it is not already there. Hope that helped.

Alex B

Thanks for the quick response.
 

When you say "full quality," what exactly do you mean? I will definitely try your suggestion. It will probably affect the picture quality, am I correct? Anyways, thanks again for the help.

Eric Eugenio

I think Alex is right. What is the resolution of your mpg clips? Are they something like 320x240 (fairly common)? Other than the size issue, you will need to render these as DV (assuming your project is DV). By saying "not full quality" I think he means the clips aren't the normal 720x480 frame size, and they may not be the full 29.97 fps. Additionally, they could suffer from blockiness due to heavy data compression.

The problem with resizing as Alex describes is that FCP doesn't seem to do a very good job of this. One thing I recently did when using clips like this was open them in Quicktime Pro, then exporting them as DV at 29.97 fps and 720x480 resolution. This let me drop them into a normal FCP project without change and they looked pretty good (although the source was relatively high quality). Also, if your source clips are 320x240 then the aspect ratio will be wrong for NTSC DV, something else you would need to address if you don't use the technique I describe.

Thanks
 

I'll definitely try the quicktime deal. Thanks so much..Its weird because the same footage, captured the same way works full screen but the others are small.

Eric: I think you will find the answer as to why certain files behave differently by examining their properties in FCP. Select the clip in the browser then go to Edit > Item Properties. Compare these between clips to see what's different. If there is a mismatch between a clip and the sequence you're dropping it into then you get behavior like what you describe. Click on the timeline then choose Sequence > settings to see how these differ from your clips.

THanks
 

Thanks a lot alex for you help. I'll try that too!

No problem, glad to help. Hope it works out for you.

Alex B