How to Import GE PJ1 camcorder .mov Files in FCP?
The GE’s PJ1 is equipped with the ability to record HD video and photos, all larger than life. Put your best foot forward with the GE PJ1 and you’re images will take center stage everytime. The GE POWER Pro series PJ1 projects the images and videos from your PC through the camera’s built-in PICO projector, and automatically enhances facial features detected by the camera for true subject highlighting. Capture all of your videos in high-denition 720p resolution. The shutter automatically releases when the subject’s smile appears. The blink detection option alerts you if a subject’s eyes may be closed when the photo was taken.
Color Support: Color
Continuous Shooting Speed: 1.39 frames per second
Digital Video Format: H.264, MOV
Digital Zoom: 6 x
Effective Sensor Resolution: 14,100,000 pixels
Video Capture:
MOV – 1280 x 720 – 30 fps
MOV – 1280 x 720 – 15 fps
MOV – 640 x 480 – 30 fps
MOV – 640 x 480 – 15 fps
MOV – 320 x 240 – 30 fps
MOV – 320 x 240 – 15 fps
All of these are great, till you find it is a problem importing the H.264 MOV footages to Final Cut Pro for editing. Even the raw video could be successfully loaded to FCP, the film will looks quite jumpy. H.264 is a delivery codec rather than editing code, and you need to transcode the video to a format more friendly for FCP, for instance, Apple Intermediate Codec or Apple ProRes 422 codec. The following passage guides you how to convert Canon T2i footages to Apple ProRes 422 encoded MOV file for FCP.
Required software:
Pavtube HD Converter for Mac
Step through:
Step one. Run Pavtube HD Converter for Mac. Click ‘Add’ button, browse to the footages and load them to the converter.
Step two. Select the items to be converted, and click on ‘Format’ bar to set a FCP friendly format in Final Cut Pro template. There are Apple ProRes family, DVCPRO and HDV codecs for your choice. Basically, “Apple ProRes 422 (*.mov)” is the best format for converting GE PJ1 footage to FCP. If you prefer smaller file size, choose “Apple ProRes 422 (LT) (*.mov)” instead.
Step three. Click the “Settings” button and set proper video/ audio parameters. My advice is to set the video size, bitrate and fame rate to be exactly as the footages so that you will suffer least quality degradation. For example, when the video is shot at 1920*1080, 5mbps, 30fps, you could set Size-1920*1080, Bitrate-original, Frame rate-30. If you would like to use default settings, simply skip this step.
Step four. Click the ‘Browse’ button next to the Output File Name field and select a location on your HDD for the output video file.
Step five. Click the ‘Convert’ button to start conversion. After conversion you can click the “Open” button to locate converted video files for importing to FCP without rendering.
Hope the Pavtube HD Converter for Maccan help you.
Small Tips:
Preview the video- select it in file list and click ‘Preview’ button.
Thumbnail- click ‘Snapshoot’ button when previewing the video. Click ‘Option’ to set the image format of screenshots.
Deinterlace- click ‘Editor’, switch to ‘Effect’ tab, find ‘Deinterlacing’ box, and check it.
Combine files together- check the files to be merged in file list and check ‘Merge into one’ box beside ‘Settings’ button.
To make the editing faster, you can convert the MPEG files to Apple Prores 422, since it is less compressed. Note that trascoding will definitely degrade the video quality, this is inevitable. The quality loss is up to your settings when converting the footages.
