iMovie HD, export to FCP HD
 

Well, I'm picking up an FX1 in the next couple days. My problem is, I can't afford Final Cut Studio just yet, since I'm spending over $3000 on the camera. I don't want to spend almost $200 on LumiereHD or a similar program, since I do plan to buy Studio fairly soon.


So.... I came up with a concept for editing. Can someone with an HDV camera, iMovie HD, and FCPHD test this out for me? Here's my conceptual workflow:

1) Import footage into iMovie HD.
2) Export a full quality HD clip to QuickTime (Share option?)
3) Import that clip to Final Cut Pro HD
4) Edit in FCPHD

If this workflow is impossible (export from iMovie doesn't work or something), is there a way I could get the footage into FCPHD without buying any software? Any freeware solutions? Thanks in advance!

Eric,

What you are saying does work but in my mind is limited. The big issue you will see is that the Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC) that iMovie uses to import the stream is less than desirable if you are looking to preserve full quality. With this method you downgrade the footage with the first step.

I noticed the noise that AIC introduced with the first time I tried it this way.

If best quality is what you are after, it is better to do the Lumiere approach or bite the bullet on FCP5.

Thanks for the advice. I want to get FCP 5, it's a matter of talking the parents into a loan to pay for it ;-).

Why not get FCP Express, doesn't it support HDV? $250

Not a bad idea, is there any way to export from Express to Pro 4.5? I'd like to be able to use Pro for some of the more advanced stuff.

Final Cut Express HD is not any better than iMovie HD for HDV work. Both use the Intermediate Codec.

I digitized some footage last night using IMovie HD. Man, was I disappointed. It looked like hell, totally unusable. Sometime in the last month or two I remember installing an improved AIC from Apple's auto-update, I'd hate to have seen the old one.

I then went and downloaded the Cineform AspectHD demo app and digitized the footage. What a difference!

My advice is stay out of IMovie and FC Express.

Wow- I had no idea it employed a different compression scheme---- I see why everyone was waiting for FCP5 with native HDV editing.


How does the Lumiere workflow compare- does it compress or alter the footage on export back to camera?

Importing to iMovie
 

When I import to iMovie with the automatic scene detection on i get a couple frames from the next scene at the end of the previous scene...this seems to happen quite a few times in a 60 minute miniDV tape. How can i stop this from happening?

We'll see, but unfortunately I don't think you'll get much response to iMovie questions here. We seem to be more oriented towards FCP. Have you looked at the resources on Apple's support site:

http://www.apple.com/support/imovie/

and their discussion groups:

http://discussions.info.apple.com/we...ed2QU.0@imovie

thanks for the links i'll check them out.

i do have education discount though and FCP express is only 200 canadian. Is this a problem in FCP as well? right now i'm just editing my family's home videos...is FCP express overkill? I've kind of mastered iMovie and am strongly considering switching up...maybe it's time.

FCE would give you a lot more control in your editing, but would require a little more learning on your part. Nothing to be too scared of however!

I can't really answer your question. I don't use automatic scene detectly like iMovie has. I'm not even sure if that's supported in FCE and FCP. Generally you can use something called "capture now" whereby you roll the tape and watch it on a viewer. Then click the capture now button and it will begin importing your footage until to press the ESC key. If it encounters a timecode break it will stop though.

But the preferred method of capturing is called "batch capture." With this you play through your whole tape, and you manually click a button to mark where to start and end capturing, then give each segment a name. So one tape might be manually broken down into a dozen or more separate clips. When you finish designating all the in and out points for these you click "batch capture," the tape rewinds, captures the first clip, fast forwards and captures the next, etc. The advantage to this is that if you keep records (which I'm pretty sloppy at unfortunately) you could recreate your project again by just popping in each tape and letting the computer recapture all the clips, based on their time codes.

Sounds good, thanks for the info Boyd. I ordered Final Cut Express...can you recommend some books or online articles I should check out to get started or should i do what i normally do and just start messing around?

iMovie 4 projects in iMovie HD?
 

This might not be appropriate for most users of this forum who use FCP, etc, but I have been waiting a few months to do some upgrading on my system due to the contancy of projects that I have been working on.

I am about to upgrade to Tiger that has been sitting on my desk since April, right next to iLife '05, and the Apple Production Suite.

I have been running Jaguar (10.2.8) and cannot run these apps on that. I skipped Panther, and have been waiting for a 'dead spot' in my production schedule to do all my upgrades and deal with potential buggy aftermath before my next production comes around.

I still have a few projects done in iMovie '04 that I might want to open and tweak a little bit. I undertand that iMovie '05 organizes its media files differently in a project folder than iMovie '04 did. If this is true, than my question is the following:

Will I still be able to open earlier iMovie projects using iMovie HD ('05) with point and click ease, or is it even possible?
-Jon

I recently upgraded and had 1 old Imovie4 project that I needed to open. It opened it, and just asked if I wanted to change the attributes. Once doing so I could not go back. I clicked ok and haven't had a problem.

I think that was the answer you were looking for but perhaps I missed something in your original post.