How about converting everything to Apple ProRes?
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, greg <e...@...> wrote:
>
> Hello, i could use some help regarding video shot from a variety of
> sources,
> which i'd like to bring all together and edit on Final Cut Pro 6,
> ultimately output and compressed to a few different formats:
> quicktime H264 for my own website (and for iPod), flash for YouTube,
> and then of course the ability to burn to DVD in high quality. The
> output/compression shouldn't be a problem for me. Its the choice of
> codec for importing and working with multiple sources that seems
> confounding (!)... wanting to maintain decent quality without too many
> rendering stages, and not bogging down the computer...
>
> my multiple sources include:
> - Canon HV30 mini-DV camcorder, shooting in either HD or DV mode
> - Sony TRV950 mini-DV camcorder in DV mode
> - shooting blog-type video in Quicktime from my Apple MacBook's
> internal camera, which uses h264 640x480 millions 16.7 FPS / AAC
> stereo 44.1
> - capturing to disk from Wirecast video streaming software, which uses
> a strange codec suffix i've never seen before "f4v", but it think its
> also h264.. and the highest-quality option i could choose came out as
> 720x540 millions 22.1 FPS / AAC stereo 44.1 (wondering where these
> arbitrary frame per second rates come from?)
> - a friend's portable video camera which puts out "Apple MPEG-2 SD
> Camcorder Video 720x576 (1024x576) 16-bit Little Endian 48k"...
> (pretty low quality)
>
> I'd imagine that i have to pick one codec to edit with and then batch-
> process all my clips ahead of time, and then import them into FCP. I
> have a recent MacBook Pro 2.93ghz and firewire 800 hard drives, so
> processing power is probably not too much of an issue; however, HD
> footage probably only makes up 25% of my clips, so i don't think its
> necessary to choose HD as my codec of choice (as it tends to take
> quite a while to render!)... Any suggestions?
>
> Part 2: Sometimes i'd like to simply edit the Quicktime/Macbook or
> Wirecast H264 video all by itself, within its native codec, so there's
> less chance of loss (and less time converting files). Using Final Cut
> 6, when you drag a captured clip into a sequence, it 'sometimes'
> prompts you to see if you want to change the sequence settings to that
> of the clip... cool...
> but: for some reason it still often requires a rending stage, and its
> usually the audio.... weird... why? is AAC a problem?
> also, sometimes the imported movie has serious audio drift, which gets
> worse the later you go in the file...and so it doesn't appear like an
> easy shift would fix it. Any idea what's going on here?
>
> Thanks in advance for any help, suggestions or links
>
> Greg
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
