how can i put movies into final cut to edit them to music?

so i wanna be able to drop movies into final cut and edit them to music.

how can i go about this process?

That is a very broad question...and forgive me in advance but I assume you haven't really used Final Cut before (or much).

You can import any .MP3 file into Final Cut. Probably one of the most basic things to do is pull in video into the timeline (which normally has 1 video stream and 2 audio streams for left and right stereo). Click the audio clips and delete them. Drop in your MP3 and you are done. You can even leave the original and have different levels of audio to mix sound, etc...

My best advise would be get a Lynda.com membership for a month or two (I think it cost like $15 a month) and take the tutorials on Final Cut. They are great and hands on so by the end you will be literate in Final Cut.

There also some ok videos on Youtube but you end up having to search through 10 crap ones to find 1 decent one.. and they are not organized by topic like Lynda.com nor do they have sample files to download so you can follow along.

I learned by book the 1st time. There are some good books that have a DVD with them so you can follow using real material. My 1st book was for Final Cut Express HD and was great.

i'm pretty good with final cut. the audio part isn't a problem, it's pulling a movie from dvd to final cut in it's original quality.

and i apologize for being a little "broad" at first.
i'm just feeling a little overwhelmed trying to get everything up and running.

The DVD is broken into VOB files. I normally use VLC to open each one and find the "pieces" I want. One I find them, I still use VisualHub to convert the VOB file into an .AVI or .MP4. Looking through the forums, I have seen other programs that will do this, but I think the consensus is Visual Hub works the best.

The problem I am having is once I drag an .AVI or .MP4 into Final Cut Studio I can't drop anything into the timeline without rendering it which takes forever. That is why I posted somewhere else about a program that would take an .AVI or .MP4 to .MOV since that format is native and can be read by Final Cut without having to wait 45 mins for it to render.

I did get QT Pro which lets me take those .AVI or .MP4 files and convert them into .MOV but the quality is horrible (all kinds of pixelation even when I save at max output).


Hope that helps...

Oh, and Visual Hub lets me choose the quality output and I don't see a loss when moving from VOB to AVI. That said, I have only done standard DVD's and NOT Bluray.

I have never tried to convert files using Visual Hub for encrypted movies... I normally use Mac the Ripper to rip an encrypted movie to my harddrive and then take the VOB files and convert them.

Not sure if I am the most efficient or if I am using the best method, but searching for instructions is tough... there is information overload out there.