Can FCP or iMovie read avi files

G

GuyS

Active member
I shot a live event video to my XH A1 that was hooked up to a Firestore FSC. I saved to footage to Canopus avi. A friend fo mine wants to take that footage (delivered to him on a hard drive) and use it in iMovie. He also has Final Cut Express but is just getting up to speed on it.
Is there a way he can import this footage and use it?
 
I could not get AVi files into FCP but I believe that if they are in the correct "wrapper" it could work. I want to know about this as well.
 
You should be able to. I know you can in FCP, I am not sure about Express or iMovie. I did it a couple of times a couple years ago from footage that was captured from Premiere Pro. Just make sure that your timeline settings are correct.
 
My understanding is that avi is a wrapper just like QT. Not all AVI files will work in FCP.

Might try MPEG Streamclip if that don't play
 
My avi files captured in Sony Vegas on a PC could be read with FCP 6, if that's any help....
 
Nest time capture to Microsofte AVI on your Firestore, Canopus AVI won't work in FCP, but MS AVI has a better chance.

JohhnyD
 
Which codec are your avi files encoded in?

FCP would have to constantly render anything I did in huffyuv.
 
GuyS said:
I shot a live event video to my XH A1 that was hooked up to a Firestore FSC. I saved to footage to Canopus avi. A friend fo mine wants to take that footage (delivered to him on a hard drive) and use it in iMovie. He also has Final Cut Express but is just getting up to speed on it.
Is there a way he can import this footage and use it?
Click to expand...

AVI and Quicktime are both containers with header information, could you please provide more information about the kind of video codec is being reported inside the AVI files. As there is a case where the AVI will open but you'll suffer loss of quality. I'm assuming the you could have sourced in HDV and DV, so the question is what did Canopus do with the HDV, as DV(25) is cross-platform and cross-container between MAC and PC and Qucktime and AVI. But certain codecs are not, or are proxied, esp if they come in with the wrong encoder header, framerate, timecode, audiochannel count etc...

The most loss-less way to get AVI files into FCP is if the codec is matched and you re-wrap the AVI into a Quicktime without trans-coding or converting it.

Canopus like most edit systems has it's own "preferred" codec. Also try opening said AVI files on Windows in the Quicktime player and see how they behave.
 
This sometimes works with AVI files and is so simple it's certainly worth a try:

Just open the file in QT Player and choose Save from the File menu and make it self-contained. That's it. This doesn't transcode or convert - just puts the AVI in a QT wrapper as a .mov file.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top