10-21-2008, 02:02 AM

Hello all!

I looked around for this specifically on these forums, but couldn't find my answer.


I'm going to be making a feature in Final Cut and later author to DVD Studio Pro of a concert. For the most part, all the clips were audience shot with various different kinds of camcorders, digital cameras, etc. with a lot of different file types.

I'm working with Avi, Mov, MPEG, DIVX, DV, MP4, WMV, etc.

What is the most pain-free way to get everything to work smoothly in Final Cut.

I see Final Cut crashes whenever I bring in an AVI file, and one of the kinds of files (forget off hand) doesn't load the audio.

I mean, its no big deal really if I have to convert all the videos to a one proper format (would this be DV or Quicktime?).
But I want to preserve any quality the clips have without converting them so many times (as a lot are digital camera movies that need to NOT be put through a lot of generations of converting and such).

Can COMPRESSOR handle this for me, or is that app for handling videos AFTER making them in Final Cut? (obviously, i don't have Final Cut Studio, or I would know the answer to that).

Or am I stuck with converting dozens of movie files in MPEG STREAM CLIP?

So basically, what files should I bother converting to, and should I be converting to DV or Quicktime to use in Final Cut (again, the final result will be for DVD).

File size isn't really an issue. But I just don't want to have to convert clips to one format to edit in final cut, only to have it go through another conversion once the final product is done, to then be converted to DVD-MPEG2 format.

Sorry for this being too long (or confusing).
Any help would be appreciated!

thanks!

10-24-2008, 08:27 AM

Compressor should do you good. Key notes: make all files and project have the same specs.
Pick a size, and frame rate. Make all your movies and your project settings/timeline settings have that same size and frame rate.
Export all the videos in compressor according to that size and frame rate. What does not export in compressor, you will need to search for an application that will export that file format specifically.
Same goes to audio, all the same rate.
Some files might have trouble exporting audio, and need other applications to assist. Or the use of your creativity to record the audio and import it separately.
Hope this helps.