Editing with Final Cut Express 4

[Andy Jackson]

Previously, I edited video with Pinnacle 12/Vista but this method has become too cumbersome (very frustrating) with the lagging OS/hardware combination. So basically I'm trying out Final Cut Express 4. The only issue I've run into in the beginning is this: I store my .MTS files on my computer hard drive. Now, with Pinnacle I could just browse the file system and pick out the .MTS files I wanted to edit. The problem is FCE4 seems to only want to read the files directly from the camera. It won't see the .MTS files if I browse for them, is this because OS X doesn't know this file format? Is there a better way than converting the .MTS files to .MP4 which can be seen by the program?

 

[John Wetter]

Import them and keep them in either DV or Apple intermediate codec if you're wanting to re-visit them. Using the Log & Transfer window is the only supported way to pull it all in as FCE doesn't work with AVCHD, it converts everything to AIC to have frame level control because AVCHD only saves a full frame once a second and the rest are diffs, or changes in the frame to fill out the other 29 frames each second.

There are several MTS to FCE converters out there so if you have already dumped a bunch of footage without using the log and transfer window, that might be an avenue too, but log and transfer should take care of it.