Flipcam footage not playing in iMovie or Final Cut

[ZoeyPan]

A few friends of mine and I filmed some footage on a flip cam, which I believe is .avi format. We're trying edit it for a film, but I can't get the image to play in QuickTime and iMovie doesn't recognize the footage. Ideally, we'd like to use Final Cut Pro but that doesn't work either.

Is there a simple or easy way to convert the file to DV or something compatible with Final Cut/iMovie? I tried Googling and looking through forums but so far I'm just stuck. If you can't tell, I'm a major amateur at this.

Thanks for any help!

 

[CaptainChunk]

Both iMovie and FCP should be able to work with the footage, but it has to be imported (transcoded) first since the Flip's codec is H.264. Neither program will edit the H.264 natively. In iMovie, File -> Import from Camera should work. In FCP, you'll want to use Log and Capture (File -> Log and Capture).

Have you tried those methods?

 

[shellgrrl]

FlipCam Footage in Final Cut Express HD

Hello - I've uploaded FlipCam .avi files to my Mac and tried to convert them so they will play in Final Cut Express HD. I even downloaded Quicktime Pro so I could try converting them to Quicktime files. However, they still won't play (audio works, but not video) in Quicktime file format in FCE-HD. Any tips? Thanks.