[News]

News: emotionDV has upgraded to High Definition. Welcome to emotionHD!

[Kittihawk]

I have a laptop version of FCP 5.1.4

I have a lot (300 x 40 minutes) of MPEG4 clips I need to look through and want to quickly block selects into about a two hour time line - the quality is not an issue as it will all later be repeated in high quality on another system - however the clips have been presented to me in this format.

Rendering even one of the clips takes eons so I don't want to have to render them on the time-line - but there isn't a codec in FCP 5 for an MPEG4 sequence (why not? - does it in FCP 6 or 7?) 

Is the only way to view and cut these files without render in FCP5 to convert them all to another format such as DV?

[Kittihawk]

OK I think I'm able to answer my own questions now, but post in case of interest:

FCP 5 has no Codec for MPEG4
FCP 6 has something close but you have to render the audio
FCP 7 can cope with it all

[Duane]

Of course, the real answer that nobody wants to read is MPeg4 is not an editing codec, but an acquisition codec. It is too much work for your computer to do trying to deal with the long GOP and compression. Using whatever version of FCP you have you should convert the files to the best editing codec your system can handle; from DVCPro HD to ProRes.

Now I am not even going to ask why a person who spends hours keeping FCP 5 and G4s running is working with MPeg4 video because the answer would probably make me weep. ;^) Oh, wait, I think I am confusing you with another member entirely. Ah well, all in good fun, right?