Editing & Exporting T2i Footage in FCE

[AlecJenx]

Hello everybody!

I recently purchased the T2i, and I've been having a field day shooting everything in sight. But when it comes to editing these types of videos in Final Cut Express, I'm a bit of an idiot.

Firstly, I've been reading around and I've seen a lot of mentions about Mpeg Streamclip, and I'm wondering what this is all about? I convert my footage before editing it in FCE? Up until now, I've just been importing the videos onto an external HDD, adding them to my project, then editing the videos and rendering them once they're in the Timeline. What benefit is there to converting in Streamclip first?

Secondly, I've been less than thrilled with the images that come out of my exports. When viewing my project in the Canvas, it looks great and I AM thrilled, but once I export it, the quality definitely degrades and it seems to me like it brightens the images up. Below I'll show how I'm exporting my videos, and hopefully all of you nice/knowedable people will be able to help me out.

Example video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqjC29EyhYE&hd=1

I've searched around on this forum (and others) for this info, but I can't seem to find a straight answer! But I know there are some amazingly talented people on here who do this type of thing for a living, so I'm sure I can find my answers here.

Much thanks!

 

[spinnerlys]

As H264 and AAC are highly compressive codecs and editing applications such as FCE, FCP and others don't like that (thus the rendering), you need to transcode the source clips to .mov files using the Apple Intermediate Codec for video and Uncompressed for audio using MPEG Streamclip.

Currently the clips you have right now (H264, AAC) will work in FCE, but every time you drag them to timeline you have to render the timeline and if you move the clips around or trim them, you have to render again.
As this is quite time consuming and the Apple Intermediate Codec for video and Uncompressed for audio are meant for editing, FCE will give you no problems if you choose the right sequence settings. This topic comes up every week or so, thus using MRoogle might find you a thread or three dozens about this.

Also have a look at the Final Cut Express manual (FCe > Menu Bar > Help > Manual), as you paid for that too. It will give you a lot of information about proper media management and preparation.


Though I just checked, FCE does only take HDV resolution as HD sequence settings, meaning HD footage in the 4:3 aspect ratio and the Canon shoots its footage at 1920 x 1080. Hmm.

Again, the manual and MRoogle might help.