Final Cut Pro and Windows, making DVCPRO HD work

I shot a project (what seems like ages ago) on the Panasonic AG-HVX200 and I had to transfer a working copy to my sound editor’s Windows computer.

Unfortunately, I discovered that Apple’s DVCPRO HD codec doesn’t really work on Windows, at least, not Sonar. I tried to convert it to ProRes and use the Apple’s ProRes Decoder Quicktime for Windows, but this didn’t didn’t seem to play either (It played in Quicktime, just not Sonar).

The one thing that seemed to work was exporting the video as an avi.

Final Cut > File > Export > Current Settings (and make a self-contained Quicktime movie)

Then open the file in Quicktime and choose the AVI option

Then choose the following AVI setttings (as far as frame rate goes, just choose the frame rate of your sequence settings in Final Cut Pro)

This creates a lower-resolution, but playable video file in Sonar that appears to sync up to the audio OMF file well (then again, the piece is under 10 minutes long, so there’s not really a lot of room for drift).

Better playback with Final Cut Pro

If you’re using Final Cut Pro on a laptop, you’ve probably experienced your fair share of headaches trying to play back video (especially if it’s HD).

However, I just discovered if you go to System Settings > Playback Control and set the following – voila! – video can play back, albeit with lower quality:

RT: Safe
Video Quality: Low
Frame Rate: Half

It’s the equivalent of setting the quality to “half” or “third” or “quarter” in After Effects, but instead of having a convenient toggle button near the viewer (where you think it should be) Final Cut Pro has buried this deep in the system settings.