Capturing: iMovie vs. FCP

After a vacation, I find the easiest way to capture my HDV footage (Panasonic HDC HS200) is to plug it into iMovie and just do an auto capture. Supposedly iMovie captures at the original size/rez.
The resulting QTs are 1440x1080, 1080i/60.
Would capturing with FCP buy me any more resolution? I've tried it and it seems more complicated with the logging, etc.

Well then I'm even more confused !! Panasonic to my memory didn't get into the whole HDV era and moved straight onto AVCHD. I might be wrong but I thought HDV in consumer cameras was just Sony, Canon and JVC??? As I said, I could easily be wrong.
Either way, there is .......
DV. Standard definition recorded onto tape.
HDV. Hi Def in a few different flavours recorded onto standard MiniDV Tapes.
AVCHD, MPEG-2 and a few other formats recorded onto SD Cards and internal Hard Disks.
If your camcorder is tape based it is clearly one of the first two and is most likely to be interlaced footage either standard or High Definition. With either of these I would use Final Cut Express or Pro to import as they will import at the highest possible quality. iMovie 8, 9 & 11 will definitely reduce the quality of your imported footage so not good for archival purposes.
If you have a copy (or can get hold of iMovie 06 HD then even better. It will import DV and HDV at full quality, but like Final Cut, the file sizes for HDV will be pretty huge - About 30-40GB per hour.

Similar Messages

  • Importing from iMovie to FCP -- Timeline

    I've been using iMovie and am about to upgrade to FCP. If I import an iMovie project file into FCP, does it import the clips and the timeline/editorial layout? In other words, will I be able to see my layout/edits in the FCP timeline, or will FCP only import the actual clip files into the browser, and then I have to manually reorder everything?
    Powerbook G4   Mac OS X (10.4)  

    1) If I wanted to give it a try and pull my iMovie into FCP, will the timeline also import?
    2) If I follow your advice and convert the clips to .mov files...I have one more question: Say I captured a 1 minute clip from my video camera into iMovie. I then trimmed and slipt that clip into a 30 second segment. Is there anyway to access JUST that 30 second segment/new clip and convert to .mov? I can only seem to locate the original 1 minute dv file I imported.
    Thanks!

  • MUST be pro here that can help! Opens fine in iMOVIE in FCP, audio need ren

    http://www.filmtv.biz/Shot04.dv.zip
    It's a small clip 9mb.
    Tried changing sequence properties to no avail.
    This opens fine in iMOVIE, plays audio and video fine. Am new to this (from Sony Vegas) and can not figure out how to get this to play in FCP without rendering.
    There must be a property setting that I am missing.
    Thanks again!
    Cheers!

    Your audio is 32-bit and you are using a 16-bit
    sequence setting.
    Might try exporting at 48/16 stereo.
    Whoa!
    Everyones moving just a tad bit fast for me! (grin)...
    Ok, now I know if I capture, transfer from DV Cam, etc, there will not be problems, but this was a trial editing per se and the files where submitted as is.
    My questions really isn't about iMOVIE vs FCP, how silly (grin), but more to why does iMOVIE play everything so seemless whereas FCP needs rendering?
    Now, let us say a client gives me 10 clips such as this for a commercial, when you say exporting 48/16 (which I think I changed in the settings (SEQUENCE) it had no effect, what do you mean by exporting?
    If you where to get these clips as is, how would you import them into FCP and make them work without rendering? If this can't be done then what would the next (BATCH PROCESSING) steps be?
    I still do not understand export at 48/16 reply! As mentioned I did make some changes in the sequence settings but it did not help, plays fine in viewer but not canvas. I know iMOVIE is a consumer product but it does read/playback much easier than FCP. You would think FCP would inherit at least this part of the "smart" technology or at the very least when importing make the changes on the fly?
    Thanks again!
    PS. Where did you get the properties info? I opened in QT and did not see anything that mentioned audio settings in "movie info" or "property setting" nor did I see them when I right clicked the clip, it did not show audio info.

  • Unable to Log and Capture AND make FCP a boot disk

    I am unable to go into Log and Capture mode in FCP 4. I can capture from firewire using I movie just fine so I know the sytem works. The minute I open Log and Capture from within FCP (with the JVC Mini-DV camera hooked up thru Firewire), it crashes. Help. I upgraded from FCP 3 to FCP 4 a couple years ago and it hasn't worked right since. Would re-installing the FCP 4 upgrade work? Also, my system works very sluggish. Please explain to me how I would make the veersion of FCP 4 my boot disk. I realize that I can't have the FCP 4 application and the media on the same drive but is there a way to partition one of my drives and make FCP one of the startup disks? Hope this isn't too confusing. Thanks.

    First off, FCP 4 was darn unstable. FCP 4.5 is a free upgrade and is STILL the most stable version out there. FCP 5 is getting there.
    Secondly, try:
    Shane's Stock Tip Mantra: If the program was working fine, and now isn't, or just isn't working the way it should, the first things to do are:
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  • Can't capture video with FCP 5.1

    Hi All,
    Here is the case. I'm trying to capture the video from my newly baught Sony HDR FX7. Here are the specs:
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    G5 660GB HD, 5.5Gb RAM
    In Easy set up I've selected HDV-1080i60
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    When capturing the video (after I've connected to log and capture I push play on camcorder and then click capture now on FCP) I could see on the capture screen and my video running but here an there a green line would cross the film and then it would slow down for a 10th of a second and line would run accouss the capture window again. The type of lines you'd get in the old movie? .
    After I've captured all 5 sigments I had on the tape and when I tried to play (I went to file-import-file, I've selected the captured clip from my internal HD where the FCP put the files). The file opened in browser. And then it open in preview window of FCP. At this point the clip that is 1 minute long would play for 2-4 second and end there. The quality of it was also very, very poor (and I filed it at HD 1080i.
    So, the quality was really poor. It was the case with all 5 clips I've captured from FX7. All of them 2-4 sec. long and very poor quality.
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    So, I was reading this forum and did this:
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    Also it's worth noting. When I push play on camcorder and click capture now, new window comes up and it says on the bottom of it "searching for meadia..." press esc to stop or something like that. May be it's not finding it?
    Also, when I first filmed with this camera, I would stop after every clip, turn off the camera, plug it into tv and preview what I've filmed.
    Either way, the few seconds of the clips that I"ve got are very bad quality. When I view the clips on my TV and monitore connected thru 3 colored cables, the video was ok, I'd even say good, just too much noice in it. But quality of capture is horrible.
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    Question is answered

  • My external hard drives are causing problems when i capture DV in FCP

    We have external hard drives (2 different brands lacie and WD) are causing dropped frames when I capture DV in FCP. This only happens when they are connected via firewire 800. When I connect them using USB everything works great. Any ideas why this could be? We have 2 of each drive and 2 older mac pros and they both have this issue with every combination of drives I try. I've also tried reseting the ports with no luck...

    Connecting your camcorder to even 1 FW drive constitutes daisy-chaining.  Even if you have two FW ports in your Mac, connecting a drive to one port and your camcorder to the other is the same as daisy-chaining as far as  your Mac is concerned.
    Try capuring from your camcorder with no exernal FW drives attached.  Verify that works before trying anything else.
    Also, I noticed your profile says you have a Mac Pro.  You might consider adding a FW card in order to get extra FW ports that are not on the same FW bus as the built-in FW ports.  Then you could connect your external FW drives to the card; and your camcorder to the built-in ports and it should work.

  • Clarity into IMovie, quicktime, FCP

    Hi there:
    I've just been handed a PPT which I moved to Keynote. My task is to take the material, add a scripted voice and background music. So I thought the route would be to export the slides to Imovie or FCP. When I exported to Imovie, the text was not as clear as in Keynote.
    So to make this presentation with two sound sources, should I make a single sound track of the right length for the sldes (which means I'll need to determine each slide length toward the total project) and stay inside Keynote, or is there a way to export with more clarity (I tried the jpg,tiff and pdf, and they all had the quality loss). Or should I find some other method?
    Also, should I use IDVD to put the final product on DVD or Toast Titanium? I do not want all the themes, etc.: just the video.
    Thanks.
    Powerbook G4   Mac OS X (10.4.7)   1.5 mhz

    Don't need anything that complicated! To add music to
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    I had the exact problem (music problem) but it's
    there in front of our noses...
    The thing is, when you export your keynote file to
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    song file in QuickTime, selecting in the timeline
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    timeline.
    Hope that was helpfull
    Hugs and kisses
    CV
    Hey:
    thanks for the note. Soundwise, however, I still have a problem in Keynote because I need to add 2 audio tracks: one for the music and one for the narration. Keynote offers me one track.
    any thoughts?
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    --fred

  • AVCHD looks better in iMovie then FCP, How come?

    When importing 8 min of AVCHD footage from my Sony TG1 to iMovie it takes about 8.5 min, and when importing it to FCP 7 (in AIC like iMovie does) it takes about 6.5 /min, but the result looks worst (i.e. every horizontal line looks broken), does anyone know why?
    I Know that FCP AIC footage have more details in it and will be closer to the original AVCHD, but the "lass quality" in iMovie looks much better.
    The only way that i could make the footage in FCP 7 look better is by converting it to DV or putting the de-interlace filter. both ways takes about another 10 min to render.
    Does anyone know away to get the same results like iMovie in FCP but keeping the 8 min process?
    Does can recommend a good and fast MTS to DV converter?
    Thanks in advance
    Elad

    Thank you every one for your replies and the explanations.
    iMovie de-interlace on the fly when you watch it. when I bring the MOV file from iMovie to FCP, it looks the same as the one that already in FCP.
    My destination is a standard definition DVD, and as quick as possible. I found that at the moment the quickest way to burn the final edited project is by using a stand-alone DVD recorder. That's why i thought plugging the computer to the DVD recorder with the display-out, will do the job.
    I'm working with fast moving object in the footage so i don't think de-interlacing is the answer for me.
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    I appreciate your help allot
    Thanks again
    Elad

  • Unable to capture HDV in FCP 6.0.1 from Sony HVR-Z1P

    Hi I'm attempting to capture HDV footage from a Sony Z1.
    I am trying to capture some HDV footage I shot with the Z1, but FCP simply refuses to recognize the Z1
    I'm certain I've got all the settings correct:
    - Camera is set to HDV firewire out
    - capture presets is set to HDV
    - device control preset is set to Sony HDV FireWire
    - sequence preset is set to HDV 1080i50 (I'm in Australia)
    - footage IS HDV 1080i50
    But I keep getting the "Unable to Initialize Capture Device and Device Control" popup. I've tried everything
    - rebooted the camera
    - restarted FCP
    - rebooted the system
    - changed the capture/device control settings in FCP and tried out a regular DV deck to make sure it wasn't the cable
    Nothing has worked.
    I'm on a MBPro I7. No Kona card or anything like that, just trying to capture through firewire.
    Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
    Thank you,
    Matt
    At present it will capture HDV in IMovie but not FCP 6.0.1
    Message was edited by: Matt Blyth

    Thanks Adrian, since posting the thread I've thought of that too but unfortunately to no avail. From other forums I've read this seems to be a central theme to the solution to my capture woes. I since have sorted the problem it was in Audio/Video Settings.
    In the end I set my Audio/Video Settings to:
    Sequence Preset to: Apple Intermediate Codec 1080i50
    Capture Pre-HDV- Apple intermediate Codec
    Device Control Preset: Sony HDV 1080i50 Firewire
    And hey presto my I'm capturing HD without any problems. Thanks everyone for your suggestions.
    Message was edited by: Matt Blyth

  • Sony V1U Not Capturing HDV in FCP 6

    Hi all
    I am running FCP 6.0.2 on a Dual 2GHz PPC G5 running OSX v 10.4.11
    I shot some footage on a friend's Sony HVR-V1U in 1080i. I used the 1080i 60 easy set up to create a project in FC and the log and capture window never sees the camera. I checked all the settings on the camera -- the in out menu is set to HDV, etc... all the things everyone online says to do... but still nothing.
    So I tried capturing in iMovie and voila -- it sees the camera and controls it and captures with no problem...all those movies import into FC just fine, but I know that iMovie is converting the footage to a different codec...and I want FC to do what it should be able to do...so I still want to fix the problem...
    The only other thing I'm wondering is do I have to be using the weird Sony proprietary "iLink" cable? (The one that plugs into the side of the camera under the LCD?) I'm just using a the usual firewire cable that I always use for cameras -- and in this case that cable plugs into the V1U at the spot that says "HDv/DV out" on the back of the camera, so I THINK I'm ok, there, but I dunno.
    Has anyone had this problem? Has anyone solved it?
    Thanks
    Rob

    I followed your list -- one menu setting I didn't see on the camera was AV/V-DV...I looked at the menus when the camera is set to VCR and also when set to Camera and I didn't find it...can you please clarify?
    In any case, I followed your kind instructions to the letter (with the obvious exception as I've stated above) and still no go. One new wrinkle, though: When I start FCP now, it asks me where the external HDV device is -- it's looking for the camera even though it never saw it before...(unless it's remembering it from when I tried successfully to capture the HDV as plain old DV footage)
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  • HELP! No longer able to capture HDV in FCP 6

    I had a seamless FCP workflow using my Canon XH-A1 and FCP 6. I always connect my camera and power it up first before starting FCP. My settings were perfect, then about a week and a half ago FCP would no longer capture HDV from the camera. I tried redoing the easy setups: HDV > HDV:1080i60. Then I tried all the other variations. I tried trashing the preferences and restarting my computer and all that. Then I tried to see if Toast 10 would recognize the HDV camera to capture... no. But all works fine when set to DV mode. Everything about this situation seemed to have pointed to the fault being with my camera, so I sent it off to canon to check it out ($$$). Today I borrowed a friends Sony HDV that has worked fine before and it too failed. FCP is not recognizing the HDV camera. In an act of desperation, I installed iMovie and opened it up, I connected the camera... wth, it works!?! I am now convinced that there is something not right with FCP. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated!!!

    I figured out the problem!!! It was "Rosetta". Hopefully this issue will help someone else in the future!
    When I upgraded to Intel Mac Pro from G5, many plugins were not supported. About a month and a half ago I opened an older project of mine and had problems rendering some vital sequences with several plugins from the G5. After going through every plugin I had and reinstalling them one by one, many plugins still would not work. My solution was to use Rosetta with FCP...
    I had not captured any HDV media since turning Rosetta on for FCP, and I guess forgot it was even on. I clicked on the FCP App and hit "command + i" for info, unchecked Rosetta, and instantly my HDV is capturing perfect again!
    I wish I could use an abundance of prolific and explicit vocabulary words to express knuckleheadedness of my inability to not figure this out sooner...
    ROSETTA was the CULPRIT of this issue!

  • HDV tape random capture aborts in FCP

    I am trying to capture many hours of HDV footage to disc. Capture Now is aborting frequently either due to alleged timecode breaks or alleged stream problems. But in fact the breaks seem to occur at random: on second or third attempts, capture passes smoothly over the supposed break point, only to abort again later on. I am rarely able to capture more than a minute at a time. Here are the hard facts:
    Tapes are Maxell Professional DV-M63Master ME DV/HDV, recorded on only once
    Camera for both shooting and playback is Sony HVR-V1P, connnected via FireWire to:
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    FCP is set to abort capture on dropped frames and on timecode break (I understand that this second option makes no difference with HDV anyway). I don't want to miss frames that are actually on the tape.
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    Julian,
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  • HDV Capture Problems in FCP 5.1.1

    We are using a Sony M10U HDV deck to capture footage in Final Cut Pro. Recently, on all 3 of our systems, the tapes seem to be coming in with a TON of time code breaks - and at each FCP creates a new clip. In a single 60-minute tape I will end up with 40+ clips. Not very convenient for multi-cam editing. We've been using the deck since FCP 5.0 came out over a year ago and have not had this issue in the past.
    I can't seem to recall any particular software update that we might have done on the Powermacs at the same time that could have caused this. (For awhile, two systems were on 5.1 while the other was still on 5.04 and all had the same issue). I've tried skipping the Sony deck and digitizing straight from a camera with the same problems. I've tried different firewire cables too.
    Also, if I play the tape straight to an HD monitor from the deck or a camera there doesn't appear to be any time code breaks or drop-outs. If I downconvert and capture as DV, everything captures fine with no timecode breaks reported. It only seems to be HDV related.
    Short of clearing off and re-formatting my hard drives, (I currently have 4Tb of data and I'm not sure where to go with it all) I'm running out of ideas on what else to try.
    Has anyone else experienced this issue?
    I'm running:
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    Mac OS 10.4.6
    Quicktime 7.1.1
    Dual 2.7Ghz G5
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    GeForce 6800 GT
    Xserve RAID 5.6Tb
    Thank you.

    Perhaps you have updated Quicktime recently?
    If so, try a full quicktime reinstall.
    Go to /library/receipts and delete any files that say Quicktime followed by a number e.g. Quicktime703.pkg
    Go to the Apple quicktime site and download the appropriate version of Quicktime to your hard drive.
    Run the Quicktime installer.
    Repair Disk Permissions for your System Disk (Disk Utility > Select the system disk > Repair Disk Permissions)
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    x

  • Capturing DVCAM in FCP 6.0.2 and encountering strange capture behavior

    I have FCP 6.0.2 and OSX 10.5.2 and QT 7.3.1. I have been capturing several DVCAM cassettes using my Sony DSR-20 deck. Although I have done this countless times before in earlier versions of FCP, I am encountering some strange repetitive behavior. I am capturing 30 minute clips one at a time. When I use batch capture it will cue the tape up properly to the in point...and then start capturing until it gets to about 10-12 minutes in, and then capture unexpectedly stops, no dialogue box, the tape rewinds and starts capturing again from the original in point. On this second capture, the tape sails past the 10 minute mark and keeps going to the end of the 30 minute clip. It then stops, gives me the dialogue box that it has successfully captured. And it has.
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  • Sony Z1U HDV Capture Settings for FCP 6.0

    Hi, I am shooting a project on Sony's HVR-Z1U HDV camcorder at HDV 60i NTSC. Does anyone have suggestions for settings to capture the material into FCP. I have FCP Version 6, part of the FC Studio 2 upgrade.
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    There are definiitely some advantages to editing in DV rather than HDV for easy workflow and faster renders, etc.
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