Scott- have you tried changing the sequence settings (not the project settings, which wouldn't have MPEG-4 as an option). I went into the FCE manual, and the sequence settings window in FCE has a pulldown for compressor, and MPEG-4 is supported in Quicktime, where FCE gets its choice of codecs from. Just guessing here, as I don't have a copy of FCE in front of me.

Yeah tried changing it there too. You can change things like the Pixel Aspect and Field Dominance, right clicking there gives you a drop down selection list but sadly the Compressor has no equivalent (it just says "No shortcuts", see the two attachments).

If there is a way to get FCE to work with MPEG4 I would love to figure it out tho :) It's quite depressing considering that iMovie can work with MPEG4 files without having to transcode to edit as can FCP, so it's a little unfair IMHO.

How frustrating. Perhaps they will unlock this in the future, with the growing popularity of hard drive or memory cameras.

Well I have sent them through a feature request for this, maybe if enough FCE owners do that we'll get it :)

I've decided my next computer upgrade will be a Macintosh.

But I don't think I'll be able to afford Final Cut Pro.

So I'm looking at Final Cut Express.

I agree that MPEG-4 support would be nice in that program.

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net

I have a Mac Mini dual core attached to my HDTV. I import Sanyo files with a card reader, then import to iMovie, which converts the files to Apple Intermediate HD 1280 x 720P. This doesn't take long, and permits cutting on the frame. I am used to a professional NLE (Vegas) but have found that I can pretty much do what I need in iMovie. I then render in the Apple codec or in Quicktime H.264, which looks just about as good and takes one tenth of the storage space.

If I felt the need for FCP, I imagine I could just drag the files to the timeline and export to FCP. Rendering seems to take just a little bit longer than real time.