Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Format Differences Between iMovie & Final Cut

I

IvanB

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 13, 2009
9
0
California
I'm new to Final Cut (Have the first version installed now) and I noticed I couldn't import most of my audio tracks that I previously used in iMovie due to format change.

What are the consistent formats that work with Final Cut? As I noticed it will let me import certain .mp4 tracks but not all of them and I don't know why that is? :confused:

Also I have a lot of video footage captured in 1080i wide screen in iMovie, but I can't fit 90minutes of HD footage onto one single sided DVD. Is there a way for me to still burn this using iMovie and iDVD without having to import into Final Cut and do a conversion? It seems like iMovie 6 is so much quicker for simple one track editing, as you don't have to render it after every little change....though I appreciate the more advanced capabilities offered by Final Cut for more advanced editing.

Thanks
Ivan
 
LethalWolfe

LethalWolfe

macrumors G3
Jan 11, 2002
9,370
124
Los Angeles
IvanB said:
I'm new to Final Cut (Have the first version installed now) and I noticed I couldn't import most of my audio tracks that I previously used in iMovie due to format change.
Click to expand...
Audio should be 16bit, 48k AIFF files.

What are the consistent formats that work with Final Cut? As I noticed it will let me import certain .mp4 tracks but not all of them and I don't know why that is? :confused:
Click to expand...
AIC, ProRes, DVCPro HD, HDV, etc., are examples of HD codecs to use w/FCP.

Also I have a lot of video footage captured in 1080i wide screen in iMovie, but I can't fit 90minutes of HD footage onto one single sided DVD. Is there a way for me to still burn this using iMovie and iDVD without having to import into Final Cut and do a conversion?
Click to expand...
Are you trying to make an SD-DVD that's playable on a TV, or are you trying to make a data DVD?

It seems like iMovie 6 is so much quicker for simple one track editing, as you don't have to render it after every little change....though I appreciate the more advanced capabilities offered by Final Cut for more advanced editing.
Click to expand...
You have your FCP project setup incorrectly. Going through the tutorials that came w/FCP won't take long and will make getting comfortable w/the program much easier.


Lethal
 
I

IvanB

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 13, 2009
9
0
California
Thanks for the input Leathal.

Yes although the original format was captured as 1080i HD, I don't have a way to burn to blue ray so I will need to burn about 90 minutes to a SD dvd. Any suggestions?

So it sounds like your saying there is a way to import original footage into the FC and be able to watch it without rendering it? If that's the case great, I'll do more reading.

Thanks again.
 
CaptainChunk

CaptainChunk

macrumors 68020
Apr 16, 2008
2,142
6
Phoenix, AZ
FCP has been based on Quicktime since it's inception and as long as you're feeding it compatible video codecs in QT .mov containers (like the ones Lethal mentioned), all should be well.

By first version of FCP, I'm hoping you don't mean FCP 1.0 (which is 10 years old) and perhaps Final Cut Studio 1.0 (which is FCP5/Compressor 2/Motion 2/DVDSP4). FCP 1.0 doesn't support HD codecs...at all.

If you have Final Cut Studio 1.0, you can use Compressor to encode your HD video to DVD MPEG-2 video (there are several quality presets and you can make custom ones, too) and Dolby 2.0 audio. Those two files (.m2v for video and .ac3 for audio) can then be brought into DVDSP to author a DVD.

In a pinch, DVDSP also has its own DVD video encoder if you must bring Quicktime files directly into it, but it isn't as customizable as using Compressor to encode the video first.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom