Mpeg Streamclip DVD workflow for Final Cut Pro
Moving your files from a DVD to a hard drive will decrease the processing time and integrity when using Mpeg Streamclip. Mpeg Steamclip is a great free software from Squared5 that allows you to easily convert DVD's in their Mpeg2 form, to Quicktime movies to be used in Final Cut Pro. Mpeg Streamclip has many other uses, but the DVD to Quicktime conversion is why I use it.
I recently had the brain storm to transfer the VOB file I needed to
convert to a Quicktime over to the internal hard drive of my Mac,
before initiating the conversion. Why I hadn't come up with this before
is beyond me. The process goes much faster than reading the VOB off of
the DVD. The reason I decided to try this was because after two
attempts of doing the conversion directly off of the DVD, Mpeg
Streamclip gave me a disc reading error message, and had only converted
23 of the 29 minutes. As soon as I thought of moving the VOB to the
harddrive, a giant lightbulb went off, and i asked myself why hadn't I
been doing this all along. Bottom line the conversion directly from the
hard drive went flawlessly, and I was able to convert the entire 29
minutes.
This same mentality works great when dealing with the tapeless video formats. I have been transfering the contents of my AVCHD camers hard drive to an internal hard drive instead of ingesting directly from the camera. This has proven to be a grea workflow as well for a couple reasons. First of all it is a great archive of the footage, and second, the Final Cut Log and Transfer is much more responsive to the files on the internal hard drive than the cameras hard drive.
This same mentality works great when dealing with the tapeless video formats. I have been transfering the contents of my AVCHD camers hard drive to an internal hard drive instead of ingesting directly from the camera. This has proven to be a grea workflow as well for a couple reasons. First of all it is a great archive of the footage, and second, the Final Cut Log and Transfer is much more responsive to the files on the internal hard drive than the cameras hard drive.
