Final Cut Express

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Is it just me, or is it really impossible to output a movie to a DV camera with Final Cut Express??

I have mpeg movies that I wanted to put onto the camera and iMovie won't open them without converting them. Final Cut Express will open them without converting them, but then I can't export to the camera. It can import from the camera, but not export:confused:

I looked in the obvious places like File>Export, but all there is under that is Final Cut Movie and Quicktime...

ARGH
 
I don't use FCPE, I use FCP, and to export to tape, a DV tape, you have to have a DV file format that will transfer over firewire to the camera. DV is set to the TV standard for whatever you use, PAL or NTSC. MPEG is a compression that needs to be decoded, and this prevents the possibility of sending this information fast enough to print to tape. So you have to use DV, no way around that, unless you have a beta system and you use that format. So like i said, I have no idea how FCPE works, never used it, but I'm sure there is a print to tape command in the menu as FCP. YOu just have to have a DV file to work from thats all.
 
i think i read somewhere that one of the things disabled in fce was export as DV, but i don'r remember it that well... there are some features missing in fcpe, and that doesn't seem like it would be one, but my memory is telling me differently.
 
It would be really stupid of Apple to disable Export to DV since it's been in iMovie since version 1. I'm sure it's in FCE, but you have to keep in mind that for any computer to export a video over a DV connection, it must be in DV format. You can't just export any old video format to DV in real time - the conversion process is too CPU intensive (maybe with PPC 970's this won't be a problem? :) ). First export your MPEGs as DV videos, then export those to a camera.
 
yea, i noticed i had a P in there, u know what I meant by that. So thats not such the big deal that you're making it out to be. Na Na :) ...It's been a long day.
 
OK, so that must be my problem. I can export it as DV but that was just going to take forever to export.

I had an idea that I could export it from FCE as DV and then open it in iMovie and put it onto the tape but iMovie wouldn't open a DV file that big(over 2GB).

I guess it makes sense why it couldn't export directly to the camera from mpeg if it was taking over an hour to convert a 100 meg mpeg to DV.

I guess I didn't think about it for some reason:D ;)

Thanks guys.:)
 
To export to DV camera, you, of course, must have your camera connected and recopgnized by Final Cut Express (if you can capture than you obviously have done this).

Then choose:

File>Print to Video (kboard shortcut is "^m");
You will then get a menu where you will able to set your head settings (Bars & Tone, Slate, Countdown, etc...), then click "OK".

The program will then prepare the video, and here is a "slightly" tricky part. Once the video is ready to put down on tape you have to manually start the DV Cam, but don't worry, you will receive a clear message telling you when to do this, and then follow the obvious buttons from there.

Good luck.
 
OK, I'll have to give that a try, thanks.
I did start the print to video, but it was just sitting there with a long progress bar, and I suppose it was converting the movie to DV format. But I didn't know that's what it was doing so I canceled it.

Now that I know what it's doing that sounds like it'd work.
 
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