troubleshooting imovie import into final cut pro X

David

I posted the exact same problem this morning EDT approx 8am. Two responses - both others with same issue. Many of us are having same issues.

You're going to be very happy. I figured it out. It's not that bad either, a bit of a hassle but you'll be fine. Me too.

1> purchase compressor app on the apple app store if you haven't yet. it's $50.

2> start it up.

3> menu> Settings (or cmd-3). Scroll down to the custom folder and click the little plus/down arrow on top right of the settings window and select "H.264 for apple devices".

4> Double click the new custom setting you created called "untitled..."

5> Here's where you decide based on the actual pixel shape of your source .dv file videos. In my case, it was 720x480, so I selected "Apple TV SD (anamorphic)" as the "device", and the "aspect ratio" as "4:3". You pick the setting based on whatever your DV files are. If you don't know, use quicktime pro "Inspector" window to discover, or download VLC from videolan and use that. They both play and show you the pixels, etc of your .dv file. Whatever the shape, make sure the aspect ratio you choose in the setting is the same as the original source.

6> Select Audio setting 256 kbps

7> Name the setting something short (trust me) - name is on top

8> click "save" button on bottom of window

9> in the window that shows "drag a file to create a job", drag a folder full of .dv files

10> MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ENOUGH SPACE ON THE HD OF THE SOURCE MATERIAL FOR 15% MORE SPACE OF FILES

11> click submit button below list of videos in job

12> go to the folder of the source .dv files and you'll see new files you created

13> In FCPX - choose to import these new files and you'll hear their audio in FCPX - and you'll see the quality of the video is the same.

See pic below of custom setting for compressor app to made me hear audio of .dv files I got from my old camcorder :

"It's not that bad either, a bit of a hassle but you'll be fine. Me too."

for a revolutionary editing program seems a bit sad, no?

Power words like "revolutionary" and "amazing" and "all new" "redesigned" "powerful" etc are marketing terms. I learned long ago the difference between the power words used to sell the product used by the marketing team, and the real world words that are used by end users, engineers and the like which are much more accurate. Words like "quirky", "awkward", "inconvenient", "klugy", and "work-around" "clumsy" etc. In my 13 years of working with a number of software video editors on windows and mac- they ALL have their quirks, inconveniences, work-arounds and the like. FCPX is no exception. It's also not the most expensive NLE I've ever paid for either. The hassles we find are things that the marketing folks don't have a clue about, and if they do, they don't mention it. The only time Apple will ever mention software problems - is in the list of fixes and improvements in patch releases coming forth. Lesson of day>> don't ever believe the hype.

Lol - I saw all of the 'this app isn't Final Cut Pro at all, it's iMovie Pro', but iMovie handled my DV files just fine.

FCP X will handle my video (HD) better - I think I can even yank the events that iMovie pulled in and re-import the AVCHD directly and save a lot of file space if I want (no need for that giant intermediate format, apparently?), but for &^#*&^# sake, why can't it at least handle DV as well as iMovie? Quicktime? Handbrake? They all handle the DV files just fine.

(And as I've discovered from another thread, the issue is that the DV files have 2 audio streams and would need to be post-processed, and I have a LOT (>7,000) of these files because of how iMovie imported them. No interest in re-importing (not that I'm convinced that FCP X would do that correctly...), and converting sounds less than enchanting too.

The reason FCP can't see the audio tracks is because .dv files contain raw data without any other information. FCPX evidently needs audio to be structured into tracks.

Instead of converting to H.264, I would recommend creating a DV QuickTime movie. You'll get much better performance this way and you won't be losing anything since your media was DV to begin with.

To rewrap the .dv files without recompressing them, open them up in QuickTime Player 7 and go to Save As. Select the option to create a self-contained movie. If you have lots of movies to convert, you may want to consider ClipWrap. You can convert them in Compressor too but I'm not sure if it's smart enough to rewrap them without recompressing.

Good idea!

But why do my .dv files get twice as big as before when saving as .mov with Quicktime 7 ?

Is this the same with ClipWrap, as I don`t have a license yet ?

I exported the .dv file with mpeg Streamclip as a "Apple DVCPRO - PAL" Quicktime movie, file size remaining quite the same, but I am not sure if I have the same quality of the material afterwards.

The problem with that is also that the somehow implemented timestamp is not visible in Final Cut Pro X, as the Events are not in chronological order anymore as they have been in imovie.

Thanks for feedback

Bernd

Hi Bernd

If memory serves DVCPro - PAL was panasonics dv codec that runs at 50mbps verses the Apple DV - Pal codec that makes a quicktime .mov file at 25mbps, and therefore doubling your size. I chose to batch transfer in MPEG streamclip from .dv to Apple DV - Pal. This results in a .mov quicktime file wrapper that doesn't change or reencode the dv data, just makes it not crash FCP X on ingest. It seems to work pretty well for me. I now have over 200 tapes/ events from iMovie into final cut.

The downside of this, and it's a big one, is that Final Cut looks at the new files and sees the creation date as yesterday for all of them. Even though each clip has that crappy clip-2004-02-12 17;32;14.mov title that iMovie can figure out, final cut can't and so you lose all that great date and time stamp meta data.

Any ideas on that?

Thanks

-Morgan

Yes.

Open terminal.app

you get this:

yourmacname:~morgan$

type the command in syntax: touch -t YYYYMMDDhhss.mm filename

example: yourmacname:~morgan$ touch -t 200402121732.14 clip-2004-02-12 17;32;14.mov

if you don't want to type the movie name at all, just find the .mov file in finder window and drag the file into the terminal app and it will be written automatically instead of you typing it.

To be LESS specific about time and just keep to date and do it for more clips than one, type:

touch -t 200402120000 clip-2004-02-12*.mov

the command above will move all clip files representing feb 12th 2004 to be timestamped with feb 12th 2004 at midnight.

Thanks for your advices!

But when I transfer in MPEG streamclip from .dv to Apple DV - Pal it somehow changes the pixelsize of the video.

When I open the files with QuicktimePlayer 7 I get for both: Format: DV 720 x 576 (768 x 576) but the mov file has a different windowsize, it seems horizontally distorted ?

When trying to do the Terminal-Thing mentioned above: permission denied

I think that Apple should be aware of this impossibilities to import iMovie Libraries and will hopefully soon bring an update which will fix these problems.

I mean: at least Final Cut Pro X should be like iMovie Pro...

720x576 is the correct size and aspect ratio for DV PAL. It uses rectangular pixels not the square pixels of a computer display. You use the corresponding format in FCP. Do not change it. If you're produce for the web or other computer display you correct the pixel aspect ratio on output to the delivery format. DV PAL is a television display format and that's where it needs to be viewed.