HMC-150 & Final Cut - How To

[USLatin]

What setting changes have you guys made to work with the straight footage from the HMC-150 in FC? Or do you always transcode to ProRes?

[matt s.]

Transcoding is required as of now until FCP can edit natively. Personally I have been transcoding to DVCPROHD with Toast 9 and working in FCP 5.

All though i have been thinking of jumping ship and building a quadcore PC and running Premeire CS4 to work with the AVCHD natively. I have always used Macs but honestly these days I'm all about getting the work done and using whatever will accomplish the task the easiest.

[USLatin]

Well I guess at least Toast converts all automatically... right?
I assume that.

Is FC Expected to support AVCHD in the near future? Ever?

[USLatin]

Also, how heavy are the DVCPRO HD or ProRes clips? I suppose they would be lighter than the HVX-200/a or HPX-170... right? How would the 1080p stuff edit on a Mac Laptop?

[pailes]

Well I guess at least Toast converts all automatically... right?

Toast can batch-convert all your files.

Is FC Expected to support AVCHD in the near future? Ever?

Rumors say FCP 3 will support AVCHD natively.

Also, how heavy are the DVCPRO HD or ProRes clips? I suppose they would be lighter than the HVX-200/a or HPX-170... right? How would the 1080p stuff edit on a Mac Laptop?

I think ProRes clips are heavier than DVCPRO HD clips. But also, ProRes supports full HD resolution while DVCPRO HD does not. Read about all ProRes here:

http://newsletters.creativecow.net/n...07/05-30/2.php

[Sikari-Sakari]

FCP6 transcodes automaticly to ProRes if just drag it to a timeline, right?

[manglerBMX]

when you log & transfer it transcodes the clips to pro ress, not sure what you mean by dragging to the timeline? if you were to try and do a file>import a clip off of the card fcp would give you an error. you must either go through file>log & transfer or transcode using toast 9.

[Sikari-Sakari]

Yeah that's what I meant. Sorry for being unclear. So, when the edit is ready, which format should I export?

[manglerBMX]

well that all depends on you, or your clients needs. could be to dvd, bluray, or other forms of web codecs.

[USLatin]

Ok, so FC has a log and transfer function that transcode the stuff for you... that is great news for my friend so long as his laptop can cut the 1080 stuff with ease...

...what I meant to say about the ProRes files not being as heavy was that the AVCHD files from the HMC-150 are MUCH lighter than the DVCPRO HD files from the 200/a or 170... so... wouldn't you be able to transcode them into a lighter file size without losing resolution? And to be clear: Does ProRes or DVCPRO HD allow you to set a bit-rate? If not is there any other lossless alternative codec available from the log & transfer function?