MAC newby needs Advice!

itskindaliketha · #1 March 4th, 2008, 11:33 AM

Ok, here goes. I work at my church as a video editor. I have been editing on a PC for 5 years now and we have just made the switch to MAC. We just purchased the Mac Pro G5 and Final Cut Studio 2. ~ A big difference from Ulead! lol.
My question is, at our church we finalize all sermons on to DVD's at the end of every service. Then my job is to take those DVD's and edit the sermons on the computer and produce a half hour tv show. Its been going great!...that is until I got the MAC! I hear that we can use Handbrake to convert to a Final Cut format...but is there someone who can help me find an easier way to do this whole process?...and still stay within a small budget. Becasue I know DV tapes get pretty expensive. ~ What about loading all sermons into an external?

michaelsanford · #2 March 4th, 2008, 01:38 PM

If I understand correctly, you take raw footage, burn it to a DVD as a video DVD (as opposed to a collection of data files, and then rip it onto the mac to get the files back?

Why not just burn the data files onto the DVD as data?

itskindaliketha · #3 March 4th, 2008, 01:44 PM

Will my DVD recorder do that?

itskindaliketha · #4 March 4th, 2008, 01:45 PM

What i do is film the pastor and my Dvd recorder records it in real time. Can it turn it into data rather than a finalized DVD?

michaelsanford · #5 March 4th, 2008, 02:06 PM

I don't mean to be coy, but honestly, "I don't know, will it?"

Which DVD recorder do you have?

I'm sorry, but I assumed that you had a different setup from the start, that you were piping data from a camera right into the computer. I suggest you look at the manual for your DVD recorder and see if it will do that for you.

I can tell you that there must definitely be a better way than ripping DVD with handbrake just to edit it in FCP, we just have to find one that works with your setup.

Incidentally, if your camera has the option (FireWire a.k.a. iLink) would it be feasible to pipe data right to the computer?