Final Cut codec/compressor question

You'll want him to export it to DV video, but beware, the files will be very large, so you might want to give him an external harddrive to dump the files to.

*TEST* a short clip of one of his files before he goes and does the whole stack of VHS tapes. There is a slight chance you will have some problems.

You can test playback in iMovie if you don't receive FCE in time.
In fact, for your first attempt I would recommend iMovie.

Good luck!

 

Nope. Seriously. Trust me, you want DV. That is the format Final Cut uses. If you want it to be imported into Final Cut you're going to have to uncompress to DV anything you compress it to anyway which would result in a huge loss of quality.
Your friend is thinking logically.. yes you will be uploading this to youtube, and the quality and resolution will be small in the end, but you don't want to do that until the very end. You will be hugely disappointed if you try to go this route in terms of quality and ease of use in Final Cut.

Is your friend not local or something, why is he hesitating on file size? JUst go out and buy an external USB harddrive and give it to him. You can fit about 36 hours of DV video on a 500GB drive.

I also just want to warn you that you may want to get to know Final Cut a little bit better before you venture into this. It has a steep learning curve. That is why I suggested you use iMovie the first time. imovie is also better suited for direct export to youtube.

If you don't care how your clips look, you can take the DivX compressed files and convert them back to DV ( you'll have to convert the audio to PCM 48KHz too ) and you'll be able to use it in Final Cut, but you'll be upconverting a highly compressed stream from a VHS source. The video is going to look terrible.


Hope this helps.

 

To be honest if you found the iMovie export settings confusing you would be absolutely swamped with FCP and Compressor. They are pro apps and while easy (relatively speaking) they do require a fairly good understanding of what you are doing.

Saying that there are tons of tutorials on the web for doing things like this.

DV footage works out at about 12GBs per hour of footage. So you are looking at about 200MBs per minute of footage (roughly).

 

Cromulent already answered this for you really but I'll also respond.

yes, I would use iMovie if I were you. If you get to the point where you think you have mastered iMovie and are really good at it, then I would take a crack at FCE. Give yourself 6 months on iMovie though first.
If you don't already have iMovie 08, I would stick with iMovie 06 ( iMovie HD ), if you are going to want to learn FCE someday. The new version of iMovie is a very different approach to video and though I think it ends up being very convient for people to make casual videos, it's not for people who might want to get into heavier editing and effects someday.

Ironically, iMovie 08 has a direct "share to youtube" action in its dropdown menus.

For your first attempt, I would export your video to H.264 320x240 24fps or lower. The thing is, youtube is going to reencode your video anyhow, so it's a bit of an art trying to get the best looking video.

There are lots of websites out there with tutorials on the best settings for youtube. Good luck!

Oh and about your question on file size:

You're not trying to convert DVDs back to DV video are you?
When you friend is converting your VHS tapes to DVD, he is very likely bringing them into the system first using DV video, and then creating the DVD afterwards. DVD's use MPEG2, and the process to get that video back into a DV format is very complex as well. It's much easier to just convince your friend to make you a copy of the DV source video as he is converting it for you.

Sorry this is so complex. I wish it wasn't some days.