Final Cut Express 4

kmv · Post by **kmv** » Fri Sep 05, 2008 6:52 pm

gotenks794 wrote:is there a free-er way?

Yes. Avidemux is free and is a tool that is a lot like Avisynth but with fewer plug-ins. I really like it actually.

Two words of warning:

Surfer (who builds the Mac version) just moved to Leopard, and he hasn't quite got his build environment up to snuff, his latest build v2.4.3 (his first build on Leopard) has a few UI quirks.
Its DV codec currently only supports 720x576 @25fps. Which means that you will almost certainly have to re-sample your video - but there is a filter built into Avidemux that will do that for you.

mahler · Post by **mahler** » Fri Sep 05, 2008 10:37 pm

I've tried the Avidemux, and it is interesting, but as kmv says, it only deals with PAL footage. Converting NTSC to PAL (at least in the tests I've tried) has not been too impressive. I noticed a quality loss. But, if someone can write a tutorial which can outline how to avoid quality loss, I'd love to learn more about it!

The plug-ins in Avidemux are really nice, and I often put my finished, edited video through Avidemux to make an XviD file for distribution.

YouTube · Post by **Kionon** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 4:13 am

Use my avisynth method and then plop the HUFFYs in FCE? FCP takes them, that I know once Perian or the Huffyuv decoder component is installed. I don't know FCE well though.

gotenks794 · Post by **gotenks794** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 8:03 am

You mean with Crossover? Yes shall try it...

mahler · Post by **mahler** » Mon Sep 08, 2008 2:01 am

FCE may accept HuffYUV, but it's just going to render it down to DV in the timeline. (If you have your project set up as DV. There is no option to setup as HuffYUV in FCE.) But sure, I guess that would work. Not sure if there would be any quality push, compared to just converting to DV in the first place . . .

Castor Troy · Post by **Castor Troy** » Mon Sep 08, 2008 2:32 am

mahler wrote:FCE may accept HuffYUV, but it's just going to render it down to DV in the timeline. (If you have your project set up as DV. There is no option to setup as HuffYUV in FCE.) But sure, I guess that would work. Not sure if there would be any quality push, compared to just converting to DV in the first place . . .

Working with huffy files is a pain the ass in FCP.

I would recommend converting them into DV files.