Sony Camcorder, Leopard, and Final Cut Express

Colm_OReilly

Hi,

Recently purchased a Sony DCR-SR55 (Europe) and I've got it talking to my Macbook (with OS X Leopard), however, movie files from the HD aren't being recognised as mpg's.

They have the .mpg extension but DivX, Realplayer, QT and FCE won't recognise them or import.

I rang Sony and since their software agreement is with Microsoft they recommended 3rd party software but couldn't give out details/advise beyond that.

Can anyone help with a solution?

Thanks,
Colm

babypink

if it's recording in MPEG2 you're going to have to convert it before use.......for interest - try playing it using VLC. http://www.videolan.org

in the window menu look for media information and check out what each stream says - there will probably be 3 - meta, stream0, stream1......metadata, audio, video.

ZENER

This question was also posted on the Apple forums. Someone suggested this solution.

The problem here is that you're starting with a compressed format which means you've already lost at least half of the fidelity of the original, after that editing and re-encoding means you lose more quality - not good.

I'm not sure but ffmpegx might also be an alternative to the above suggestion. It seems that audio recorded in 5.1 presents a problem so you may want to avoid this.

ZEN

Colm_OReilly

Thanks for the replies guys. Only had time to play with it all these last two days.

I downloaded that MPEG2 thing from apple and they'd play, but without sound, so I used VisualHub to convert to avi's and the sound played.

Thing is, in FCE, they're taking an absolute age to render (about a hour per minute of footage). Anyway this can be sped up?

The vids are mainly for my MMA and Fitness sites, so only need to be reasonable quality for download or youtube, so would changing the conversion settings in VisualHub be an idea?

Thanks,
Colm

keefg

Colm_OReilly wrote: »

Thanks for the replies guys. Only had time to play with it all these last two days.

I downloaded that MPEG2 thing from apple and they'd play, but without sound, so I used VisualHub to convert to avi's and the sound played.

Thing is, in FCE, they're taking an absolute age to render (about a hour per minute of footage). Anyway this can be sped up?

The vids are mainly for my MMA and Fitness sites, so only need to be reasonable quality for download or youtube, so would changing the conversion settings in VisualHub be an idea?

Thanks,
Colm

Sounds like you are having a right headache Colm. I was in the process of ordering a new MBP with FCE for editing my videos (my Acer laptop is about to die) but as I have 2 Sony HD cameras (HDR-SR7E & a PMW-EX1) I am now worried that the MBP & Sony are not compatible

Now I dunno what to do.

meep

Keefg

Your EX1 will work perfectly with macbookpro & final cut (not sure about express). I have an EX1 and it's a very smooth process, provided that you keep the drivers and software up to date.

I halso have an SR11E hard disc camera and have had no problems getting footage off that into Final Cut either.

Peter

keefg

Cheers Meep,

I did a bit of digging and it seems that FCE doesn't work with AVCHD files until they have been converted.

Colm_OReilly

So, played around with MPEG Streamclip, and the files render much quicker.

Just need to get better at editing now...

unklerosco

keefg wrote: »

Cheers Meep,

I did a bit of digging and it seems that FCE doesn't work with AVCHD files until they have been converted.

Thats true... Was using FCE to convert AVCHD files, takes an age... I use iMovie most of the time, works a bit faster and the quality is pretty good...