I told a friend that I could probably help him with a small project. He has a Sony HD camcorder that records in 1080i AVCHD format. The event is a basketball game. · He will record the event and then give me the raw footage on regular DVDs that I load onto my hard drive. · He wants me to edit, produce and render a professional finished product in full 1080i and then render it down to DVD quality to make regular DVDs. (His words exactly) · He wants me to provide 1080i rendered finished product (keep it in the same format that he gives me; 1080i AVCHD) on dual layer regular DVDs (probably about 2 to 3 dual layer DVDs) He wants a regular dvd but also wants the higher quality so he can burn a Blue Ray disc as well. I have a Macintosh OS 10x I use FCP 6 I have a Canon GL2 that I use all the time to capture my footage, edit and then create dvds. I am unsure how to take the dvds he gives me and produce the project with his specs. Could you please walk me through what settings I will need to use, and how to get the raw footage from his DVD into FCP? Thanks! Scott

Hi Scott If it's the raw footage on DVD, simply copy it to your Mac's Hard drive or an external drive. In FCP 6 import the files into the Bin and then drag one of the files into the sequence. A message will pop up asking whether to conform the sequence settings to match the clip. Choose 'Yes'. You've now got the footage into FCP. :) Rounik

Rounik, Thanks! I was hoping it would be that easy! When I edit, will I have to do any extra rendering? Will i export my project as a Quicktime movie? (this is what I normally do, and then import into DVDSP) Will a one hour ACVHD basketball game fit onto a dvd? Thanks. Scott

Hi Scott, Rendering should be same as any other project. You can use Compressor to export the project. If you haven't checked it out already, Compressor is an essential tool! It's very powerful and can take the stress out of compressing and exporting from FCP - or any format to another! Once you compress AVCHD to DVD-video format you will be losing quality. 1080i is not supported on standard DVD. DVD support SD quality. So, you'll need to use DVDSP to adjust quality and size settings to optimially fit one hours worth of footage onto DVD. Thanks Rounik

I would just make sure he copies the ENTIRE file structure of the AVCHD folders. I've seen plenty people try the same and just copy the folders labeled clips or stream and then delete the memory cards. This equals to " I just deleted all my footage!!" have him copy the entire AVCHD folder and then You can log and tranfer that into FCP.