MacVideo Forums

Finally i've made the switch from the tempremental world of pc's to Mac, i dont regret a single moment.
I play around with video editing (or did on the PC) but am very new to FCHD. I recently recorded a friends film off VCR via my EyeTV box to mpg2. When i try and import the file into FCHD it tells me that its not a valid file. Quicktime also refuses to play it, but when i try in VLC media player it plays it fine and shows it as MPG2. I've also tried with imovie and idvd to no avail.
OS is 10.4 running on a Dual G5 with 7Gb RAM.
Ideas anyone please?


Also, im looking to buy a Sony PC1000E camcorder, has anyone used these with FCHD?

Hi andrew,

Welcome to world of video on the mac!

Unfortunately MPEG 2 isn't supported in FCE HD. In order to play it in FCE or QT you'll need to have the MPEG2 playback component for Qt - available from the apple website for a small price.

Alternatively you need to convert your MPEG2 file to a DV file or something understandable by Quicktime.

I'm talking off the top of my head here (and I might be wrong since I'm not sat at a Mac right now) but you might want to look at MPEG Streamclip - available at www.alfanet.it/squared5/mpegstreamclip.html - which will convert your MPEG2 file to DV or whatever... Heypresto! Import converted file into FCE.

HTH

Chris

Thanks for your great reply. I've got the codecs and am now converting it to DV so i can import into FC.
One other thing (if i may be so bold) is that the mpg file will not go into DVD Studio Pro either, even after conversion. Would it be better to import into FC then export to DVD Studio? I would've thought that as a DVD program MPG2 would be supported.
Once again, thanks for your reply, its helped loads.

andrewneale,
Hmmmm.... Dunno about the studio pro issue. By all means try and import into FCE as a DV file, then use FCE to output to SP using either QuickTime reference files or usign Compressor to encode to M2v and aif files.
My guess is that for some reason the MPEG files from your EyeTV thingummy are standard MPEG files and, again, if QT can't recognise the file, then Studio Pro won't either.
Just a guess though.... sorry can't be more helpful on this issue.

Chris

chris.roberts,

Once again thanks for your reply. I've done the conversion to DV and now have a 20Gb file that FC understands and lets me import...so definite progress there.
I had the thought to use compressor to convert from FC but when i submit the batch i get an error that it cant connect to background processes, not sure if this is because im using Tiger or not.
Im going to try and render the file and take it from there.

Thanks again

andrewneale,
You might want to try and reinstall Compressor if you are having that issue. I seem to remember that it occurred for me a while back and I think I reintalled the app to over come it.

Chris

chris.roberts,

Sorry for the delay in replying. I decided to rebuild my system, what with a new OS going on (old habits die hard!)
Everything workiong a treat now. Many thanks for all your advice.
Dont suppose there's any good sites for more studio templates?

andrewneale,

I believe Compressor only likes one processor, so you have to disable one. This will enatail downloading a little app and installing the developer stuff off the MacOS Install disk. The little app allows you to disable a processor on the fly. (CHUD I think it might be called?)

Now - disclaimer here - this is what I did for 10.3, I've not yet tried it in Tiger. So - caveat emptor!