Preparing video files for Final Cut Express for fast editing. Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Final Cut Express (FCE) is a nice editing tool for those with modest needs. I prefer it to iMovie, although at the time of this writing a new version of iMovie just came out that I admit, I have not tried.

FCE can work with videos, editing, cross fading etc in a non destructive manner, in realtime without constantly needing to re-render the video each time you make a change. The catch is that if your videos are not prepared in one of FCE's preset formats, it will need you to render frequently as you work so that it converts from the format your videos exist in, to the format it prefers (Apple Intermediate Codec).

I recently bought a Flip Mino video camera, which has been a great compromise of good quality and portability. Think of it as creating really good quality youtube videos (rather than really good quality home theater videos). The Flip produces AVI videos. To be able to use FCE to edit your videos, here are the settings you will need to prepare them for FCE:

First, for your Mac to be able to play the AVI files in Quicktime Player, you might need to get the Perian plugin.

Export settings:
1. File, Export
2. Movie to Quicktime Movie
3. Click Options
4. Under Video click Settings
5. In Settings choose
-Compression Type: Apple Intermediate Codec
-Framerate: Current
-Preset: HDV 720p (that's good for Flip Mino, for the new Flip Mino HD you'll probably want the HDV 1080p option).

6. Click OK to exit Video, Settings
7. Under Video click Size.
8. In Size, choose
-Compressor native
-Preserve aspect ratio using: Letterbox
-Leave Deinterlace unchecked unless you know your source is interlaced (it is not if it's from a Flip camera but might be from a handy cam)

9. Click OK to exit Video, Size
10. Under Sound, click Settings
11. In Settings, select
-Format: Linear PCM
-Channels: Stereo
-Render Settings: Best
-Sample Size: 16
-Little Endian should be checked

12. Click OK to exit Sound, Settings
11. Make sure Prepare for Internet Streaming is not checked.
12. Click OK to return to the file save dialog, then click Save.

This will render one video to the destination of your choosing. Once that file is exported, drag it into FCE. FCE might complain about it not conforming to something but ignore that message for now. The real test, to see whether or not your video is optimal is to drag it into the timeline. Scrub the playback head with your mouse. If you can see the video playing and you can hear the audio scrubbing then mission accomplished.

Here's a trick to be able to batch convert those videos so you don't have to do it one at a time. This trick essentially uses the most recently used Quicktime export settings and applies those to a set of video files.

1. So, make sure you export one video first. I think you can get away with aborting the export after a few seconds just to get the recent settings to stick.
2. The software that lets this happen comes with OS X (I'm not sure if it comes with Tiger but it definitely comes with Leopard, OS X 10.5). Try it anyway. Here's the workflow I created. Download it.
3. What you should do is unzip it, open it up (should launch Automator).
4. Then in Automator go File, Save-As, Format: Application.
5. Drag that application into your dock for convenience.
6. From then on you can drag and drop your video files to the application you just saved. It will take the videos you dropped on it and open up Quicktime Player and export all the movies using the most recent settings. I find I have trouble bringing Quicktime to the foreground while it's doing the conversions but it does work, you just have to wait it out. You should see an indication that it's compressing in the title bar along side the date and time.

Hope this helps someone, took me a while to get the combination of settings right.

*Note, IF your files are coming from a Sony video camera and you can't play them or they don't play audio and you can't convert them, you can use this tool to prepare them: MPEG Streamclip. MPEG Streamclip is free, but it depends on the QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback Component that costs a small amount, I forget how much, but I can tell you it worked for me when I wanted to bring in wedding footage from a friend's sony handycam.