chappa-ai

Q: Importing WMV into FCPX?

I need to import a WMV file into FCPX.  Not possible (Apple shortsightedness).  Okay, I need to convert the WMV into a FCPX-friendly format.  A Google search brings up a ton of pay-for converters, but nothing free.  What's a good converter for this task.  If I need to buy something, I'd prefer to buy only one application rather than strike gold on the 3rd or 4th purchase.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)

Posted on May 5, 2014 9:11 PM

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Q: Importing WMV into FCPX?

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  • by chappa-ai,

    chappa-ai chappa-ai May 5, 2014 9:59 PM in response to chappa-ai
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 5, 2014 9:59 PM in response to chappa-ai

    I think I'm settling with Aimersoft Video Converter.  It's reasonably priced and gets the job done.

  • by Karsten Schlüter,

    Karsten Schlüter Karsten Schlüter May 5, 2014 10:48 PM in response to chappa-ai
    Level 7 (32,668 points)
    Video
    May 5, 2014 10:48 PM in response to chappa-ai

    chappa-ai wrote:

    ... Okay, I need to convert the WMV into a FCPX-friendly format.  A Google search brings up a ton of pay-for converters, but nothing free.  What's a good converter for this task. ...

    wmv is a proprietary = Microsoft owned & patented format - you have to purchase a licence on non-Windows systems, that simple. Nothing to do with 'shortsightedness'.

     

    http://www.telestream.net/flip4mac/overview.htm

    is the official/legal way to teach MacOS this format....

  • by chappa-ai,

    chappa-ai chappa-ai May 6, 2014 5:50 AM in response to Karsten Schlüter
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 6, 2014 5:50 AM in response to Karsten Schlüter

    I'm just saying, $300 for FCPX versus $35 for a 3rd party converter - Apple could have worked out a deal to offer the conversion within their application instead of requiring people to use somebody else's software.  But with success in software engineering apparently being measured by how many hoops you can make your users jump through, a lot of applications seem to be quite "successful".

  • by furrytoes,

    furrytoes furrytoes May 6, 2014 5:56 AM in response to chappa-ai
    Level 2 (225 points)
    Video
    May 6, 2014 5:56 AM in response to chappa-ai

    I think it's probably because there are so few people who can spend around $2k on a Mac (for video editing), then $300 on FCPX - who then put themself into a position where the only format they can get to do their work, is Windows Media (WMV)

  • by Luis Sequeira1,

    Luis Sequeira1 Luis Sequeira1 May 6, 2014 6:48 AM in response to chappa-ai
    Level 6 (11,844 points)
    May 6, 2014 6:48 AM in response to chappa-ai

    In the past I had used VisualHub very successfully. This is no longer maintained, but just to see how it would do, I tried Video Monkey, and it did convert a 4 minute wmv.

     

    http://videomonkey.org/

     

    From Video Monkey site:

     

    "Video Monkey borrows heavily from concepts in the Visual Hub video conversion tool for its simple and clear UI and its use of ffmpeg for encoding. "

  • by Karsten Schlüter,

    Karsten Schlüter Karsten Schlüter May 6, 2014 7:12 AM in response to chappa-ai
    Level 7 (32,668 points)
    Video
    May 6, 2014 7:12 AM in response to chappa-ai

    chappa-ai wrote:

     

    I'm just saying, $300 for FCPX versus $35 for a 3rd party converter ...

    for HDef-delivery, it's 180$ ...

     

    and who, in a professional enviroment, needs wmv anyhow?

    I wouldn't like to pay for a feature, I don't need.

    Or, can be replaced by a more common and 'public' format (h264.mp4).

     

    And it's old tradition on Apple's side, to let highly specialized 3rd party companies handle the niché sectors, Sorenson, DivX, XAVC, to mention a few ..

     

    Anyhow, you have several options recommended in this thread .........

  • by chappa-ai,

    chappa-ai chappa-ai May 6, 2014 4:40 PM in response to Karsten Schlüter
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 6, 2014 4:40 PM in response to Karsten Schlüter

    I totally agree that .wmv is undesirable, but screen recording on Windows for one part of a larger tutorial project leaves me with an incompatible file format with FCPX.  I'm getting up to 10 minute segments of HD Windows screen recording for free, plus a one-time cost of $35 for transcoding it to .mov.  I saw no need to acquire Boot Camp or Parallels to put Windows on my Mac (an oxymoron in my opinion) when I already have a functional pc for running pc-only applications.  That's right, there are still some companies out there developing software for just one platform (and not necessarily the right one ), and sometimes there's simply just no substitute or alternative application. I thank you all for the responses.

  • by Tom Wolsky,

    Tom Wolsky Tom Wolsky May 7, 2014 2:43 AM in response to chappa-ai
    Level 10 (118,107 points)
    Apple TV
    May 7, 2014 2:43 AM in response to chappa-ai

    What screen capture software are you using?

  • by chappa-ai,

    chappa-ai chappa-ai May 7, 2014 5:38 AM in response to Tom Wolsky
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 7, 2014 5:38 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

    Microsoft Expression Encoder 4

  • by Tom Wolsky,

    Tom Wolsky Tom Wolsky May 7, 2014 5:39 AM in response to chappa-ai
    Level 10 (118,107 points)
    Apple TV
    May 7, 2014 5:39 AM in response to chappa-ai

    Wow. Try Camtasia for high quality screen capturing on Windows.

  • by chappa-ai,

    chappa-ai chappa-ai May 7, 2014 4:51 PM in response to Tom Wolsky
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 7, 2014 4:51 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

    Camtasia is $100.  No thanks.

  • by Tom Wolsky,

    Tom Wolsky Tom Wolsky May 7, 2014 5:06 PM in response to chappa-ai
    Level 10 (118,107 points)
    Apple TV
    May 7, 2014 5:06 PM in response to chappa-ai

    Really. I thought it was more than that. Excellent software on Windows, though not as good as Screenflow on the Mac in my view. I guess if all you will use is the Microsoft product you're stuck with WMV, which isn't really a production format, and that means getting some conversion software to go with it.

  • by chappa-ai,

    chappa-ai chappa-ai May 7, 2014 6:25 PM in response to Tom Wolsky
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 7, 2014 6:25 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

    Thanks, I appreciate the feedback.  This will probably be a one-time thing, so I'm not really prepared to fork over money on a Windows screen recorder.  I tried out more than half a dozen Windows screen recorders, and Expression was the first free one I came across with a reasonable recording duration, no watermarking, and acceptable recording quality.  I picked up a converter and got the clips into FCPX, so I'm good to go now.  If I was going to be doing this often then I'd probably buy a quality recorder, but like I said, it isn't really justifiable for a one-time event.  Thanks.

  • by BillOnBelay,

    BillOnBelay BillOnBelay Aug 10, 2016 9:52 AM in response to chappa-ai
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Aug 10, 2016 9:52 AM in response to chappa-ai

    I have the Aimersoft DVD Ripper v 4.0.0 and I thought it was very easy to use.  I spent 10s of hours ripping my DVDs to disk for a long trip.

     

    HOWEVER, when I went to play the movies 3 out of 3 had dropped out frames and 2 out of 3 had misconnected looping sections making the video impossible to watch.   These problems I encountered trying to view the first 3 movies of the whole bunch.  Not sure that is it worth watching any move of the ripped DVDs.

     

    I could never recommend Aimersoft to anyone.

     

    MacBook Pro Retina

    OS 10.11.6