I'm familiar with everything still, but now that I've recently relocated to Olympia, WA, I'm working towards getting my adventures caught in motion. I know that they are certainly lacking in quaility, but I'm shooting with a couple GoPro's for the time being. When I upgrade my DSLR, I'll start shooting with that as well.

If anyone has any suggestions for intro readings on video/processing, I feel like the community and I will be best served as I can read before posting some rather amateur questions.

Particularly, if anyone has some suggestions on video file formats, I'd really appreciate it. I'm currently using CineForm Studio and iMovie (I'll be upgrading soon, but Photoshop was expensive enough). I'm finding that since I'm using GoPro to shoot a lot of extra action that I don't need, I'm using CineForm to cut out the clips I want and then import them into iMovie. My biggest concern is that the 5GB of original footage I shoot quickly turns into 50GB when in iMovie, and my HDD is being chewed up FAST. Again, if anyone has suggestions on articles I can read about video file formats and what the whole post production process looks like, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks!

Steve

Hi Steven, Welcome Aboard!

I can't speak with any authority on various formats but I can tell you what I did. I started with iMovie like one of the applications you're using and then went to Final Cut Pro X. My timing was good because when I was looking around for a more serious program that was when FCPX came into being.

Initially there was a lot of bad reports from the more professional users about Apple abandoning FCP, and maybe rightfully so, because at the time FCPX didn't have some of the capabilities professionals wanted and needed. However, there has been some upgrades to FCPX and new features have been added. Even though there are still some features missing there has been some great strides in doing catch-up. Bang-for-the-buck, though, I don't think you can beat FCPX. If you got it now, by the time you "grow into it" there'll be another update and it'll probably include some more features.

FCPX is different from iMovie in that it is a database based application so that may take some time understanding how that works, but the idea is a leap forward from other applications that aren't databased. I've done a fair bit of programming over the years so I understand the concept and for me it's easy but, as they say, your mileage may vary.

FCPX has it's own forum here and it supplements forums elsewhere, such as at Apple and elsewhere. However, in getting started, as with any new application, you can't get enough input. There are also a number of on-line tutorials. I bought a couple books:
"Final Cut Pro X, How it Works", Rothermich - good for helping to "visualize" how it works, and
"Final Cut Pro X", Visual Quickstart Guide, Brenneis & Wohl - very detailed step-by-step, very well organized, good index, excellent.

However, both of these references are for, like, 10.0.1 and now it's up to 10.0.5 so that should be taken into account. They're still very useful though.

Site URLs:
Apple / Mac Post Production Solutions Forum at DVinfo.net (http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/apple-mac-post-production-solutions/)
Final Cut Pro X Forum at DVinfo.net (http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/final-cut-pro-x/)