So there's someone who needs to record hours of video straight from the camera to their PC using firewire, then they want to give me the raw files to edit in Final Cut on my Mac. What would be the best software to recommend to them for capturing video on the PC? I want to be able to get the highest quality video from them as possible to edit in Final Cut. Any ideas? Thanks.
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Camera to PC to Mac
- Thread starter Mattaut
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What camera is being used? DV or HDV?
Adobe Premiere Pro has a 30 day fully functioning trial, as does Avid Media Composer, and both allow capturing "live footage".
As FCP only properly accepts .mov files using the DV, ProRes or Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC), though it can use other codecs too, but it will lead to constant rendering, either let that someone export the captured footage as QuickTime (.mov) using the DV codec (if it is SD and PAL based) or if the storage capacity is there, as uncompressed video and audio in a .mov file, though you have to transcode the footage later to an appropriate format and codec again.
If the someone uses Premiere Pro, you may be able to use the .avi files in FCP or at least transcode them in MPEG Streamclip to the aforementioned passable formats.
What is the goal and destination of the edited footage?
Could you accept H264 encoded video and transcode that?
Adobe Premiere Pro has a 30 day fully functioning trial, as does Avid Media Composer, and both allow capturing "live footage".
As FCP only properly accepts .mov files using the DV, ProRes or Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC), though it can use other codecs too, but it will lead to constant rendering, either let that someone export the captured footage as QuickTime (.mov) using the DV codec (if it is SD and PAL based) or if the storage capacity is there, as uncompressed video and audio in a .mov file, though you have to transcode the footage later to an appropriate format and codec again.
If the someone uses Premiere Pro, you may be able to use the .avi files in FCP or at least transcode them in MPEG Streamclip to the aforementioned passable formats.
What is the goal and destination of the edited footage?
Could you accept H264 encoded video and transcode that?
A Sony HDR-FX1000 is being used. I believe he will want the edited footage to be burned to DVD, though also might want video files. I want to avoid compression as much as possible and try to preserve the 1080 HD, I'm just not sure which software will capture the video in the least compressed format and then also allow me to bring it into FC with no or very little compression. I don't mind constant rendering if I can maintain quality, my main goal here is to preserve the quality while going from camera to pc to mac. I just need to know the best way to do this.
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Load into avid. bring them in at the highest resolution. Export quicktimes in the animation codec (very large files but uncompressed) pull them into fcp and go from there. or see if you can convert to pro res on the pc with the additional codecs.
If I export a XML from Premiere on windows, will I be able to open it on a mac in Final Cut? The XML file would preserve quality right? Is there any cheaper software that I can do the same thing with(no editing has to be done on the PC)?
XML is not a video container, it is a markup language to transfer information (but no actual video) between editing systems.
Btw, if the recording session does only take less than 30 days, Adobe and Avid offer Premiere Pro and Media Composer as a fully functioning trial with which you can record.
Btw, why don't you record on tape and you digitise the tapes in FCP? That takes much less time than capturing, exporting (and transcoding), copying, copying again and transcoding.
Or are at you different locations, thus a cassette and/or camera transfer is out of the question?
Just a small remark, if you want to create footage in FullHD, you'll have to burn it to BluRay to preserve the size. If you want to burn it on normal DVD, you can burn the full size to ut, but the record time on a DVD in Blurayformat will be about 20 minutes /dvd if i'm right (and you need to play it on a BluRay...
If you also have to deliver the files be prepared to have a few 100s of gigs free on a harddisk, since the footage in AIC or whatever format you'll use will be very large in full HD.
If you also have to deliver the files be prepared to have a few 100s of gigs free on a harddisk, since the footage in AIC or whatever format you'll use will be very large in full HD.