Newbie: Final Cut Express HD
 

Hi
I am very used to using FCP with SD Video but ive been given this project to do and im out of my comfort zone. Perhaps someone can help me to get going. I have footage from a little digital camera, one that has a You-tube ready sticker on it. How that works ive no idea. It outputs NTSC (29.something frame rate) DV 720x680 from looking at the clip in the bin. I took the footage and some stills using the finder and literally dragged them into the bin in FCE. Now unlike when i capture from my DV camera using firwire, these Quicktime movies come into the timeline un-rendered and i cant play through them. I kinda feels like they are too big. Also i worry if i render then make cuts or transisitons i will have to continually re render.. Have i missed something. I want to work with a low res clip, an offline system...

any help would be gratefully appreciated.

David

We work with clips from Canon S5is point-and-shoots all the time; those are .avi files, but the workflow we use may give you an idea of how to proceed:

We take the digital files from the camera, convert them in VisualHub or MPEGStreamclip to dv stream files, 48khz audio, final-cut ready (this is an option in VisualHub, anyway) and import onto an NTSC sequence in final cut. If you have the proper codecs for whatever made the files they should convert to a stream you can edit without rendering.

VisualHub (great shareware) is recently discontinued by its author, but worth finding if you can do so. MPEGStreamclip is freeware, excellent imho, at Squared 5 - MPEG Streamclip video converter for Mac and Windows. It requires Quicktime be installed in order to operate. Best of luck! /Battle Vaughan/miamiherald.com video team