I Guess I'm Playing with a Real Pro App, Now!

Hi Scott! Welcome to the Final Cut world!

I also have an HV20. For the easy setup, you're going to want to select the quality settings to HD 1080i. If you have an external hard drive and want to store captured video there, change the scratch disk in one of the toolbars. Just search around the easy setup window, fix the above, and you're off! Check out Apple's tutorials at: http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/tutorials/

They should help you get started capturing and editing.

Good luck (and don't worry, I felt the same way when I purchased Final Cut Express 3. 🙂

J

Format should be HD

Rate should be 29.97

Use - I chose HDV...1080i60

and no, I don't think the 24p mode will be a problem.

And I use iMovie HD for capturing my video and then drag it into Final Cut. I don't like importing with Final Cut - so can't help you there. It's much easier to use iMovie and you don't lose any quality.

Hope this helps
J

I trust you are in NTSC land Scott ?

For anyone using PAL the settings would be 1080i50 and 25fps.

Don't be in a rush to make an important movie as there is a good chance it would be messed up.

Instead simply play around with FCE using unimportant clips to discover how it works for a week or two.

Any urgent films could be made in iMovie while you are learning the ropes.

I'm not a great believer in video tutorials as they have to be rather cursory and they certainly travel faster than my brain !

Tom Wolsky has written some very user friendly books and is the main contributor to this forum:-

http://www.fcpbook.com/What.html

If you get one of his books and don't understand something you can ask him directly.

How many people get the opportunity to question authors directly !

What do you mean mixed footage? You mean some DV some HDV? Don't do that. Don't use a tape that's recorded DV and record HDV over it. Or vice versa. They're quite different in layout and will not work properly. That said, your camera should work with FCE.

It's really hard to teach people how to use hardware and software in dribs and drabs in forum messages. You really need to read the camera manual completely so you understand exactly how it works. You need to read about the software and the hardware you're using and how they interconnect. Much, if not all of this information, is on the Internet, but it's going to be really hard to do it picking up small bits of information on a forum. A forum is really no way to learn an application, or a camera, or much of anything.

I made that mistake a month ago when I got my HV20.

I shot a couple of minutes HDV and then a bit of DV to compare the two (ignoring the camera's instructions not to do so).

I can't remember exactly but I couldn't capture either one or both of them.

So I didn't do it again!