Drag/Drop Clips

David Jimerson

David Jimerson

Administrator
Staff member
I asked this question in the Vegas forum, in a thread where FCP users were participating, but no one answered. Which is fine, because it’s, well, the Vegas forum.

I’m considering doing a job for someone who wants me to use his equipment – in this case a Powerbook with FCP on it. I know FCP is laid out differently from what I’m used to – Vegas and Edition – so I expected a lot of questions . . .

What I’m trying to do is this – I went to Finder to find all the movie clips. I then tried to drag some of the clips from the Finder results into the FCP timeline, but they wouldn’t drop. The analogy in Windows would be to do the same either from the Search results or from an open folder. It works in Vegas and it works in Edition, but I couldn’t get it to work with FCP.

Is there something I have to do differently, or is there some other issue?
 
Hmm. Is the file a QuickTime movie or AVI file? If it's something else, it may not be supported.

Dragging and dropping straight to the timeline should work, but you might want to try File --> Import ... although I'm guessing it won't let you select the files.
 
They were Quicktimes. Didn't look to be anything in particular out of the ordinary.

They may have been of differing resolutions, if that makes a difference. But none would drop.
 
Have you tried dropping them into the Browser window in Final Cut? I do that with assets (QT movies, jpegs, aiffs) all the time and it works fine. I never drop something onto the timeline from the finder because you have to chop it anyway, right? Plus, FCP likes to have everything organized, so if it's not in your Browser, then maybe FCP can't know where it came from. Try dropping into the Browser first, should work.
 
I agree with last post...FCP could just be "looking for it" if you don t drag them in the bin first... And if there s no way to bring the file by doing files-import-blabla... then your files might be problematic...maybe try to rename them ? ... .mov or .avi... dunno, this is the only thing i could think off.
 
Well, actually, I was just trying to drop them onto the timeline so I could test timeline trimming, effects filters, etc., just to get a feel for the place. If I wanted to trim something first, I would normally drop it directly into the trimmer in Vegas . . . is that possible in FCP? I don’t have it in front of me now and won’t for a few more days, so I’m wondering what to expect in that regard.
 
The Browser can be very organized and can have as many folders and bins and tabs as you want. Your best bet it to put every asset in the browser box first. However, to make things go faster you can drop something from finder into the Browser directly without having to hit file-import-files... You can also create a hot button of sorts on the top of your Browser that goes directly to the import window. I like to use finder and drop from there because you can usually preview assets (movies, mp3s) right in the finder before adding them to the browser; the import window doesn't allow you to do that.

FYI- I know you can ask questions on this forum, but I am on DVXuser every weekday at my job (using FCP all day), if you have specific questions you can just PM me.

Good luck.
 
Scottdvx100 said:
Make sure they have .mov designations.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily, but if your assets have the same properties as your sequence settings you are going to render less. I convert most of my .avi files to qt files (.mov) but I have used .avi's in final cut. You can use mp3's as weel, but it takes almost no time to let Quicktime convert them to aiff's first and get better audio.
 
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