Final Cut Pro X imports some of the motion JPEG AVIs that my Pentax K-7 produces but not all of them. I have identified that it can import smaller files (<1GB) and when I try and import larger files it gives the error "No importable files". There is absolutely no difference between the clips and those that don't other than the file size.
Final Cut Pro X-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
Work around: Open the file in Quicktime X and save the file as a movie with the media in the same format.
This essentially just creates a .mov wrapper around the movie as opposed to an .avi wrapper, and FCPX is happy. I hope this bug will be fixed in a much needed 1.0.1 release.
May I ask how you managed to create this MOV .avi wrapper with QuickTime X? I tried with the latest QT 10.1 on 10.7.1 Lion, but there is no "Save as" option (naturally) where I could choose "Save as reference", as was the case with QT 7 on OS X 10.6.8!
As you explicitly mentioned QuickTime X: I did not find any suitable option in neither "Export" (it would always *transcode* the whole movie) nor "Save to web" (it creates a folder and a reference MOV file, but it also transcodes the movie), as it seems.
What exact steps did you do to only get this small *.mov "wrapper"?
By the way I am dealing with DV AVI, as captured by an old Miro DV500 card on a Windows XP machine. The file size doesn't seem to be an issue at all, even a small 170 MByte file would fail (and sorry to disappoint you, but I tried both the original 10.0 (on Lion) as well as the updated 10.0.1 (on Snow Leopard)!
On my OS X 10.6.8 however I can work around this issue exactly as you describe, but in QT 7 Player there is still the "Save as" and then "Save as reference" option which produces just the desired small MOV file.
Just on Lion I am stuck! I simply don't get how to produce a "reference file" (only) with QT X!
I have filed a FCP X bug report about this import issue.
What really bugs me is that the same files I am able to import into Final Cut Express 4.0! And needless to say they play fine with whatever application (QT, VLC, Preview in Finder, ...) on both Snow Leopard and Lion...
By the way I have a Pentax K-5 😉 and so far did not have any issues with importing those MJPEG AVI files (not even into FCP X 10.0, i.e. the original version). However I did not pay attention to their file size, I usually don't have very large files. Next time I pay attention...
Install the QT7 player or try using MPEG Streamclip or Compressor.
Bug importing Pentax SLR motion JPEG AVIs
