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Help a newbie: Transfer from FCP into iMovie?

RedTomato

RedTomato

macrumors 601
Original poster
Mar 4, 2005
4,155
442
.. London ..
Help a newbie today?

I have 90 minutes of captured footage in FCP. I'm a newbie at FCP and am feeling rather overwhelmed by its complexity. So I want to quickly transfer it to iMovie HD so that I can get on with the project and finish off editing asap.

How do I do a quick transfer to iMovie while still keeping it in DV quality?

I've tried various options, but tests show all seem to insist on a 2 hour export from FCP followed by a 3 hour import into iMovie. I must be doing something wrong as both programs store their footage in DV format.

Capture footage: DV PAL, Anamorphic, 48khz.

Many thanks!
 
X

xStep

macrumors 68020
Jan 28, 2003
2,031
143
Less lost in L.A.
As you noted, miniDV footage is written straight to the drive as .dv files. You have set up FCP to write those to a folder. Use iMovie's Import feature to bring a file from the FCP folder into a new project. No conversion will be done. This assumes you just want the raw footage.

Remember that when creating the iMovie project, to choose the appropriate format, DV, or DV Widescreen.

If you want edited footage, then yes, you have to do an export. Try exporting as a DV Stream. Perhaps that will be faster. It certainly will be for the import to iMovie.
 
RedTomato

RedTomato

macrumors 601
Original poster
Mar 4, 2005
4,155
442
.. London ..
Many thanks, that seems to be the best option.

EDIT:

I've just done as you suggested - opened a new widescreen project in iMovie and imported from the FCP scratch folder. However, the iMovie import is appearing in 4:3, i.e. stretched vertically, with black bars on either side. Clearly iMovie isn't recognising that the footage is anamorphic.

How can I get it to work?
 
C

chrismacguy

macrumors 68000
Feb 13, 2009
1,979
2
United Kingdom
Have you got iMovie HD correctly configured for PAL Widescreen footage? (I had this issue when importing as iMovie thought it was NTSC - then forgot it was supposed to be wide)
 
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