Combining footage

[John Owen]

Hi Guys

I have a project shot with an hvr v1e (hdv, 25p) and an EOS 550. I now need to combine the footage in FCP. Any tips on successfully accomplishing this? Can I just drag footage from the 550 into an HDV timeline and render?

J xx

[Colin Rowe]

What resolution did you shoot on the 550D ? Which NLE are you using ?

[Joel Peregrine]

Hi John,

I assume the settings were the same, i.e. frames per second, resolution etc.on both cameras?

You'll need to convert the T2i footage to ProRes. What version of FCP do you have? If its 7 use ProRes (LT) - takes up less space with no visible hit in quality. The easiest and fastest conversion I know of is using a free, cross platform application called MPEG Streamclip:

Squared 5 - MPEG Streamclip video converter for Mac and Windows

The end of this renaming and batch conversion example there is my workflow for converting the shots from the T2i to ProRes:

~ DSLR - File Wrangler - MPEG Streamclip ~

After the conversion set up a timeline that matches the format of the HDV footage but change the compressor for rendering to ProRes (or ProRes LT if you have version 7). This renders quicker and also in a better quality color space.

Originally Posted by John Owen

Hi Guys

I have a project shot with an hvr v1e (hdv, 25p) and an EOS 550. I now need to combine the footage in FCP. Any tips on successfully accomplishing this? Can I just drag footage from the 550 into an HDV timeline and render?

J xx

[John Owen]

Joel and Colin,

Many thanks for your responses. Actually, the resolution between the 2 cameras differs as HDV is only 1440x1080... which I suppose might present a problem! I shot 1920x1080 on the T2I (550) Frame rate was the same

Just wondering why it is necessary to convert t2i to pro-res? Couldn't I use the .mov files the camera produces as they are? I have them all organised and named so not especially keen to disrupt them!

Thanks again for your help!

John

[William Hohauser]

You could use the files as they are but they are not .mov files that FCP is happy about. Better to convert them to ProRes.

[Joel Peregrine]

Originally Posted by John Owen

Joel and Colin,

Many thanks for your responses. Actually, the resolution between the 2 cameras differs as HDV is only 1440x1080... which I suppose might present a problem! I shot 1920x1080 on the T2I (550) Frame rate was the same

Won't make a difference. HDV has a different pixel shape and will be 1920 x 1080 on the timeline. Welcome to the confusing world of video formats...

Originally Posted by John Owen

Just wondering why it is necessary to convert t2i to pro-res? Couldn't I use the .mov files the camera produces as they are? I have them all organised and named so not especially keen to disrupt them!

You can try to edit the clips right out of the camera but you'll have stuttering and the spinning ball of death when you try to cut and add effects. Unlike other editing programs FCP can't handle decoding and editing such a compressed codec on the fly. That should (hopefully) be changed with the next version which is supposedly a complete rewrite.

And just so you know - when changing the clips to prores you'll enlarge the file size about 4x's but you'll also hold on to the clip's name. That's true of whether you use Compressor or MPEG Streamclip - you decide how the clips are named once they are transcoded. They can even have the exact same name as the source clips so if you've done any editing using the h264 versions you can reconnect the prores versions to your timeline and keep all the work you've done thus far.

[John Owen]

Joel - Much appreciated. Have just used MPEG Streamclip to convert first batch of clips - Great little programme, very intuitive and have kept the names of the new files identical.

Thanks again for the advice, and for explaining the curious character of HDV.

John