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Handbrake and FCP -- which format??

MattG

MattG

macrumors 68040
Original poster
May 27, 2003
3,872
614
Asheville, NC
I'm trying to rip a DVD that's all of 10 minutes long, and import it into FCP. I successfully do so, however when I pull it into FCP, it wants to render it, and it estimates 3 hours to render the 10 minute video. I know there's a bunch of different formats that Handbrake can rip in (MP4/FFMPEG, MP4/XviD, AVI, etc.)...what is the best to use for FCP, or am I just stuck with it taking forever to render?
 
MattG said:
I'm trying to rip a DVD that's all of 10 minutes long, and import it into FCP. I successfully do so, however when I pull it into FCP, it wants to render it, and it estimates 3 hours to render the 10 minute video. I know there's a bunch of different formats that Handbrake can rip in (MP4/FFMPEG, MP4/XviD, AVI, etc.)...what is the best to use for FCP, or am I just stuck with it taking forever to render?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't rip it into any MPEG4 format if you want to later edit it. You're taking a lossy compressed MPEG2 video, converting it to a lossy MPEG4 format, then converting it to (I guessing) a lossy Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC) (although it's so close to lossless that you won't notice it with all the previous drop in quality), and then you'll end up converting it to a lossy format of some sort for export/distribution.

I'm thinking that you'll want to rip the DVD using MacTheRipper to an MPEG2 Transport Stream, and then use a tool (the name escapes me atm, and I'm at work so I can't look in my Apps folder for you) that convers the MPEG2 footage from the DVD direct to AIC and then import that into FCP. You'll get the best quality and you'll get much faster conversion times as well.

You should be able to find the program I'm talking about if you search around for MPEG2 transport stream to AIC... this program also does DV to AIC, and a ton of other formats... it's free and really useful. Hope that helps!
 
The route I would take is to get the .vob files inside the DVD (or use MacTheRipper if the DVD is copy-protected) and use ffmpegX or VisualHub to output to DV, which Final Cut will accept. I'd avoid AIC if at all possible, especially since Final Cut likes to work with DV.
 
I would stay away from 3rd party software. It's gonna take forever to convert. Just hook your dvd player up to a camcorder and hook the camcorder up to FCP or iMovie and import it all in real time. You'll pretty much have no loss in quality in the process.
 
bkvideography said:
I would stay away from 3rd party software. It's gonna take forever to convert. Just hook your dvd player up to a camcorder and hook the camcorder up to FCP or iMovie and import it all in real time. You'll pretty much have no loss in quality in the process.
Click to expand...

Er, it'll lose quite a bit of quality. Most (all?) consumer camcorders have only composite inputs for passthrough, so it'll look pretty blech. You're talking about going digital to analog and back to digital again, not to mention using the lowest quality analog transfer method possible (composite). It'll be much, much better (and probably faster or just as fast) to stay completely digital.

There's nothing wrong with 3rd party software, and now that I'm not at work I looked up the software I was talking about in my last post - it's called DIVA (http://diva.3ivx.com/). It'll take an MPEG2 file (which you can rip losslessly from a DVD - that's the compression they use) and turn it into all kinds of stuff, but most helpfully for you DV or AIC. Should be close to realtime for SD stuff if your computer is just reasonable fast.

I'm bored enough that I would run through this whole work flow (short of importing into FCP which I don't have) to see how to do it and how long it takes, but I'm housesitting and there's no Mac here.
 
My method is to use MPEG Streamclip. Will rip from DVD and write to dv. I'm sure the other software mentioned is as good at doing the same.
 
dolphin842 said:
The route I would take is to get the .vob files inside the DVD (or use MacTheRipper if the DVD is copy-protected) and use ffmpegX or VisualHub to output to DV, which Final Cut will accept. I'd avoid AIC if at all possible, especially since Final Cut likes to work with DV.
Click to expand...
This is the best (and free) way to get high quality DVD rip into FCP. Since your clip is only 10 min long, it should be very quick.
 
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