troubleshooting imovie import into final cut pro X

not to make too fine a point on your June post, Jon, and after all you are just the messenger, but saying "FCPX evidently needs audio to be structured into tracks." sounds an awful lot like a Microsoft kind of answer.

As in, Oh, you can't do that obviously important task because the programmers just didn't make the program do that task. I'm sorry if it makes your user experience dreadful. Audio with video -- hmmm -- we'll see about making that a future release.

Apple did say iMovie import was supported. I have nine out of approx. 300 events, all imported from iMovie, with no audio. Maybe I should feel lucky since others are batting zero.

I don't work for Apple so I have no control over the features of FCPX. I agree that it should support this, but until Apple fixes it you're going to have to resort to the workaround whether you like it or not.

Don't misunderstand. I do really appreciate your effort! 3845 points, Wow!

Now on to finding out why FCPX create dates are so screwed up. Some are import dates but some are just weird, nonsensical dates. And no way to change them...

Please excuse my lack of video codec knowledge. Im a photographer and we only deal with a few file formats abd we dont have much control over those. All these video settings, bitrates, data rates and the like just makes me go dizzy.

The idea of converting to another DV format sounds like a great idea but Im unclear what the settings should be in Compressor 4 to do that. There is no default setting that I can see. In Final Cut there is an export to Quicktime and that seems to do the trick much faster the converting to H.264 in Compressor. In compressor I have chosen the "HD for Apple Devices (10Mbps) This is terribly slow. Compressor takes 4hours with that format and Final Cut Express take just over an hour with exporting to Quicktime. Im hoping to use Compressor for the ability batch process.

Thanks for the advice!

Troy

What it is that you're actually trying to do? What's your media exactly? Where's it coming from? And what do you want to do to it?

This thread is kind of old, and I'm not sure how it relates to your problem.

Thanks for following up.....

I have a library of .dv files from previous imports using iMovie. I am wanting to import these into FCPX. Since I cannot import the .dv diretly into FCP without losing audio I have begun to convert the older files.

I am unsure as to what format would be best to preserve quality and speed of conversion. There were several recommendations and I was looking for a suggestion how to setup Compressor to best convert the files.

Since these were files captured and moved, the original iMovie folders do not exist so I cannot use the import iMovie feature alrady built in.

Thanks for the advice

Troy

Do not convert to H.264. That's not a production codec. Convert to QuickTime using DV or better yet DV50, though the files will be twice as large. You can use COmpressor or MPEG Streamclip to do this.

Good to know ....Thanks!

Looking at Compressor I dont see a Quicktime option in the settings panel. Is this a setting I need to create from scratch?

This is where I go lost trying to do this myself. Not sure how to setup Compressor to use Quicktime DV.

Thanks again

Troy

In the Inspector click settings

In Compression Type select the codec.

Make sure you pick the right one for your media. Set the frame rate and size. Make sure it's right. Set audio to 48k.

Fantastic! Thaks so much for the advice!

Troy