Burning Final Cut Express Project using Toast

How do I burn a Final Cut Express project using Toast? When I export a quicktime movie, even when it is "Self-Contained" and burn it in toast I only get sound with no picture. When I export it as a .mov I am assuming that will work, but it is taking 3 hours to export a 45 min video. Is there any other way or is iDVD my only option?

The OS version I am using 10.4.10 which should show on my profile. My computer is a PowerPC G5 Dual 2 GHz with 3 GB RAM. The version of FCE is HD 3.5 and the version of Quicktime I beleive is 7.2. When I export I use Quicktime movie. I tried it with the self contained box checked and without and both did the same thing. I only got sound. When I export using Quicktime Conversion that's what takes over 3 hours. What is the difference by the way? It plays fine in Quicktime player and works fine with iDVD. I have burned quicktime files and WMF before with toast and it has worked fine. It's only when I export them from Final Cut Express that it doesn't work. I have also exported from iMovie as a full quality dv and it has worked.

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Burning an AVCHD Final Cut Express project using iDVD

I have a 1080i AVCHD video that's been edited down to 45 minutes in Final Cut Express, I'd like to burn it to DVD using iDVD, but the quality when I export as a quicktime movie and burn the disc is not good at all. I'm not expecting it to be HD quality. I'm hoping for DVD quality, when I burn this it barely looks VHS quality. It just seems like iDVD isn't compressing it well. Would it look better if I exported it to a quicktime movie from FCE and changed the size to a more DVD friendly 720x480? How do I go about doing that?
In iDVD I'm using Professional quality, I have around 20GB free on the hard drive. Should I free up more space before I try again? Any help here would be great.

Hello,
I have been experimenting with this problem for weeks now. I realize we have no way to quantify "looks great" or "degrades" but this may help. I watch the finished product on a 42" HD Hitachi plasma TV. The AVCHD footage rendered through FCE using either Pro Res 4:2:2 or AIC 1920 x 1080i preset ends up looking worse than SD 720 x 480 when rendered and burned through iDVD. There are compression artifacts all over the screen. De-interlace / re-interlace maybe? Also, using the RGB outputs from the Sony HDR-SR12 looks stunning when played directly through the TV. No compression artifacts visible. So, if the camera can transcode the image so easily in real time, why can't my mac do the same? Just the import alone is a degradation of the image. Seems to me we are waiting for FCE and FCP to have native support for AVCHD.
We have new 8 core Mac Pro towers here at PCC and the results are the same. Apple says no AVCHD support unless you have an intel mac but that is only for import. It does not natively support the format.

Saving and removing a Final Cut Express Project (Smartly)

I have finished a Final Cut Express project and would like to save and remove it from my external hard drive. What is the smartest way to do this so that in the event I ever want to go back and make changes to it I can do it easily?
Thanks for any advice you can give.

First, I'd like to say that I'm a pack rat. I have a couple video projects on my drives that I've not edited for three years. I just hate the thought of messing them up or letting go of them (there's probably medication for that) so I just let them sit there taking up precious space. I need to reform and hope you can help me.
Where does one find a list of the project files that a project requires? Also, is the media only the clips that appear in the "browser" window or are they the rendered files, as well. Maybe the rendered files are the project files?
Are all the media files located in the "capture" folder?
If I understand you correctly, if the reels were properly named, with no time code errors, I can trash the media (BUT, of course, keep the master DV tapes) and only archive the project files. If I want to re-edit the project in anyway in the future, I'll need to re-import the video from the DV tapes using this scenario.
If I don't want to have to re-import the raw footage from tape, can I back-up all the files on multiple DVDs using toast?
Lastly, what do you do when you're finished with a project?
Thanks,
Stuart

Xacti HD and Final Cut Express -- It used to work great! How do I go back?

I have a Sanyo Xacti HD700. It gives me 1280x720 MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 files, which my Mac just loves. I used to be able to quickly edit the clips together in Final Cut Express, export using complementary QuickTime settings (specifically, those recommended by Vimeo for HD playback), and get beautiful MP4 files, relatively quickly.
Then, one day, a friend needed me to edit a quick video using a DV camcorder. It was confusing as heck getting the footage into FCE, and not particularly elegant getting it out. But, the project was done overnight, I washed my hands of it, and wanted to get back to making beautiful MP4 files again, relatively quickly.
Except I can't! Now, for one, encoding takes hours. Hours! My source videos and export videos are very similar, yet I sit and watch as the estimate for completion actually goes up for an hour before slowly coming back down.
And frankly, that would be fine, except now my exported videos are the wrong size. They include letterboxes, and the video itself is squished, stretched. So I wait four times as long for a ghastly video. The best I could do is use the Quicktime export settings to "crop off" the letterboxing, but there's still some black bars and it's just not the same.
Here's how my videos used to look:
http://vimeo.com/1067235
Here's how an exported video looks now:
http://vimeo.com/1655414?pg=embed&sec=1655414
What happened? Out of the box, everything worked perfectly. Now, tainted with actual tape, Final Cut Express seems like it's running my videos through six extra wringers and giving me clips worse than I'd get just cut-and-paste editing the Xacti files in QuickTime Pro!
I Googled my brains out, and all I've learned is, if I had Final Cut Pro, "Project Settings" would have all the switches I need. Well, I don't have FCP, just FCE.
Somewhere, something was set that I want to unset. Can anyone help? Do I have to delete every trace of FCE and just reinstall?
Mahalo for any advice!

It sounds like you didn't change the settings after you made the DV video. Did you switch it back to 1280x720 and make a new sequence in that format? Check item properties for the sequence you edited. What does it say? Also check item properties for any media you captured since working in DV.

Can I open my final cut express projects in final cut pro X?

I need to get footage out of some of my final cut express projects and put them in final cut pro X, which I am now using. How do I do that?

You can export any movie from FCE to Quicktime, and use it in FCP X. If you export using ProRes 422 codec it will already optimized for FCP X.
What you can't do is use the FCE projects themselves in FCP X.

I'm trying to make "Stop motion videos" in Final Cut EXPRESS by using 100's of still photos and setting them to music. They are coming out blurry if viewed larger than 4x6 in size

I'm trying to make "Stop motion videos" in Final Cut EXPRESS by using 100's of still photos and setting them to music. They are coming out blurry if viewed larger than 4x6 in size.
I don't understand why this is happening.

Quick follow up, since I was on my phone earlier and am back to a real keyboard.
To access Easy Setup, hit Control Q.
If you click on the blue discosure triangles, a dropdown menu with about a dozen different presets will be displayed. Select the one you want, (Here, I've selected 720P.)
Whatever you select for a preset will not be applied until you make a new sequence. (I don't like to have sequences with different properties in the same project so I prefer to make a new project if I change the Easy Setup.)
Because photo aspect ratios are different than video, I typically put a solid generator of some compatible color on the first track (v1) and put my photos on the track above (v2). Looks better, IMO, than black bars. There are other creative ways to display them. And of course, you could scale them up to fill the frame…but then you probably would have to re-position them.
Good luck.
Russ

Will 7toX translate Final Cut Express projects to FCP X

Does anyone know if the new 7toX application will translate Final Cut Express projects to Final Cut Pro X?

So can you open a Final Cut Express project with Final Cut Pro 7, save that as XML, and then use 7toX?
. . . I realize, of course, this won't help anybody who doesn't have FCP 7.

HT5103 How can I open Final Cut Express project in Final Cut Pro X?

How can I open Final Cut Express project in Final Cut Pro X?

If you export the project from FCE you can import the QuickTime into FCP. You can do limited work to it like adding titles.

Can't use Final Cut Express Export Using Quick Time Conversion with iDVD.

I am using iDVD 08v 7.0.4 and until 3 days ago I could import and create iDVD's using Final Cut Express export using Quick Time Conversion. There was an update that downloaded for iDVD. Since then, I can only use Final Cut Express Exports that is a self contained Quick Time Movie.
I have never had this kind of apple and apple problem. I am disappointed that I'm having apple issues like this.

Are you on latest 10.5.x release and latest FCE updates? Your info line says 10.5.1 and you didn't list FCE version. Not saying that will fix problem, but might help. You also might want to explain how you did your Quicktime conversion.

Importing Final Cut Express projects

Hi,
I cannot see how to importing my older Final Cut Express projects into Premiere Pro CS5. I know this can be done with Final Cut Pro via the XML format, but it seems that FCE does not export to XML. Does anybody know of alternative ways of exchanging data? Maybe, a file converter of any kind?
Best regards,
Paolo

Yes, I have a couple of them, but they have their lives :-)
I guess I can have their help, as soon as they can. In any case, being independant with this kind of things would be great.
However, I guess that this conversion is to be done once, since I don't plan to downgrade to FCE again (unless Adobe stops developing Premiere for Mac again, or I end up with no money to buy the upgrades...)
Paolo

Starting a Final Cut Express project

When I try to open a Final Cut Express project by double clicking on the logo of the project the operation fails and I get a notice: "The operation could not be completed. An unexpected error occurred (error code -10660)". I can only open the project by clicking the alias of the application itself and open the project from within the application, which is much less convenient (sometimes another Final Cut Express project is first downloaded, which may take a lot of time).

It is good practice to save & close your project(s) before you exit FCE, especially if you are working on more than one project.
When you double click on your project file to open FCE, you are commanding FCE to start up & open the project you just double clicked - but since you didn't close your previous project, when FCE starts up it also attempts to open the previous project(s) at the same time ... and there is lots of potential for conflicts.

Is there a way to import Final Cut Express projects?

I use Final Cut Express, and currently working on a project. Can I import FCE project to Final Cut X and complete it using FCX?

Thanks Tom. Bad news

Final Cut Express Project space problem

I have just finished my first real project in Final Cut Express HD. It has created a Capture Scratch folder of 54 GB. Included in this 54GB is the footage that I used to complete the project which are captured as QuickTime movies. Also included are the render files.
The FCE project itself is saved in my Movie folder and that is 17GB. I created a Quicktime Movie and that is an additional 17GB (the same as the project)
In addition to the above I had to import the Quicktime Movie into IDVD and that IDVD file is 13GB.
All of this is taking up a lot of space on my Power MAC G5. I only have 11 GB available.
I have an external LaCie drive that has 91 GB available. The question is What can I transfer to the LaCie drive and still keep the project intact. I do not want to have to start this project all over again.
Please help!

Hi Kennbu,
The minimum you need to keep includes 1) your FCE Project File (which is in your Final Cut Express Documents folder, not your Movies folder), 2) the clips in Capture Scratch that you captured from your camera, and 3) any other media files (photos, sound, etc) that you imported into your FCE project. You do not need to keep any of the render files or output files unless you have other reasons to keep them.
Your FCE Project File cannot be 17GB; I suspect you are calling your exported movie your project file. The FCE Project File only contains the instructions for the things you did when you edited your project in FCE and it should be a relatively small file, usually under 1MB. It does not contain any actual video; that's what your original footage clips and/or render files in Capture Scratch contain.
When you export your project, FCE reads the instructions in the Project File, applies the instructions to your video & audio files and then creates an output file. I suspect you did this twice and that is why you have two 17GB QT files in your Movies folder.
In the future, one way to save space on your HD is export your FCE movie as a reference movie not as a self-contained movie. When you export, if you leave the "Make movie self contained" option checked, FCE copies all your video into the exported file; it takes a lot of time and uses disk space at the rate of ~13GB per hour of video. If you uncheck this option FCE makes what is called a reference movie that is very small and very fast; it usually only takes seconds to export a reference movie. You can import reverence movies into iDVD just the same as a self-contained movie as long as you are on the same machine that has your captured clips & other media files.

Restoring Final Cut Express Project from Time Machine

Hey, would like to restore a FCE project to macbook. i know you can restore individual files or folders- but i have tried to restore the main file, rendered folder and so on but i must not be selecting all files i need as there are missing clips in the project when i open it.
1) is there an easy way to restore all files required?
2) if not , what are the specific folders i need to restore so all the pathways to the capture clips still work?
any help would be fantastic, thanks for your help!
cheers.

Hello,
The only things you should restore are your *FCE project file* and any/all *source media files* (video clips, audio files, stills) that you used in the project. Don't even bother trying to recover render files, cache files or thumbnail files - they will be unusable.
The default location for your FCE files & folders is in +yourusername/Documents/Final Cut Express Documents+ folder. Note: in the event you changed your FCE scratch disk location, the Final Cut Express Documents folder will be located wherever you specified the scratch disk location to be. You may need to look through your TM backup to find these folders.
Usually your *FCE project file* is in your +Final Cut Express Documents+ folder, which also contains a folder called +Capture Scratch+ - that is where your video clips should be. Audio, stills - they will be wherever you saved them.
Note: in the event you saved your FCE project file, video clips, etc. in other locations than the default locations, you will have to search for them, as there is no way we could tell you where they might be - you could have saved them anywhere.
Also note: when you restore a project like this, it is normal to get an Offline Clips error message when you first open the project; follow the dialogs to Reconnect Media.
If FCE cannot locate certain media files when you Reconnect Media, try this: in the FCE Browser, control-click the name of the offline clip; then select Item Properties. In the window that opens, see if there is an entry in the Source row; that is probably the location where the clip was; you can use that location as a guide to hopefully find the clip in your Time Machine backup.

Interfacing Video Camera to Mac Pro for Final Cut Express HD Use

I have a lot of Video8 tapes that were made on my Sony DCR-TRV310 that I want to move to my Mac Pro and edit with Final Cut Express HD. The Sony camera only has the three (R,Y,W) output ports and my Mac Pro only has firewire input ports. Does anyone know of a cord solution or do I have to use an additional interface. Thanks

Hello,
Unfortunately there is no "cable solution" You will need an external interface. Something along the lines of an external tv tuner. Elgato Systems makes a few, i've had great success with the Hauppage WinTV PVR USB2 Tuner. This cost me about 150$ Canadian and is compatible with Mac's after a software download from the manufacturer's website.

Burning Final Cut Express Project using Toast

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