Editing DIVX directly in iMovie/FCP

September 1, 2008 6:46 AM

I've got a VIO POV1 helmetcam which records video as .avi files in DIVX format. What do I need to edit this directly in iMovie and Final Cut Pro?

Whenever I've tried to do this kind of thing before (using Flip4Mac as I remember) I've run into issues, for example FCP requiring me to render sound for the clips I drop into the timeline.

I've already tried Flip4Mac, Perian and the regular DIVX/XVID codecs and although some will allow me to play the movies with sound in QT, none of them so far will allow iMovie to recognize the files.

Solution before has been to transcode to DV or some other format using ffmpegx or similar, but the movies are long and this takes up a heck of a lot of disk space and it's slow.

Quicktime says the format is 'XVID', 720 x 480, Millions.

(I'll probably transcode to DV for final editing but I'm looking for a quick and dirty way to edit movies on my laptop to play to a group of riders each day on a trip to Moab).

posted by unSane to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Xvid/DivX are not meant to be edited that's why fcp is asking to render just about every single thing on your timeline.
Transcoding to dv or a format meant to be edited, like ProRes in FCP, is the way to go if you want a smooth experience.
Other than that Virtual Dub can do very basic edinting of divx file i believe, but's it's kinda rough.
posted by SageLeVoid at 7:50 AM on September 1, 2008

Editing XviD streams in an AVI container is incredibly easy using Avidemux. For simple things like cutting and joining clips, filtering and re-encoding segments, and (obviously) muxing/demuxing, Avidemux is the best tool I've found.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 8:18 AM on September 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

2nd-ing Avidemux. I was disappointed that there's not an OS X version of Virtualdub to edit AVI/ xvid/ divx, but it's the closest thing I've found.
posted by sharkfu at 9:51 AM on September 1, 2008

I've just spent about 30 min trying to solve this; there are some interesting items I came across.

You have two problems: video and audio. Neither are in formats that the Mac likes.

First, FCP struggles with non I frame video. I went to tell FCP to use Divx as the compression format for it's timeline...and that's a no go. While FCP is built upon QT, even with the Divx component installed - it doesn't show up in FCP. I get this. This is because, frankly non-I frame editing is fair. This is why HDV sucks, as a rule (and you have ot create a new I frame at the edit point. But it does playback in the timeline (under Unlimited RT), which is a bit choppy for cutting, but works.

The audio, on the other hand, isn't so good. FCP wants uncompressed audio to edit (I just wrote an article about how to do this sort of think quickly/easily with droplets.) Except the droplet won't allow .Avi files.

A droplet does permit the use of QT files - so I cracked open Automator to try and create an automator action that would open the file in QT and save as reference. I can get this to work for a specific file, but not 'any file.' My idea was that you'd drag your avis to the Automator action, then to the compressor droplet and then take the resulting audio, lay it into fcp and edit. While that sounds long, it takes about 5 seconds to do. Except I couldn't find a way to get automator to take 'any input' that was an AVI and save it as a QT reference.

Given that you have to do this manually, and that it's resisting any level of automation, I'd do the following:

1) Open up my files in QT
2) save as QT ref.
3) create an audio droplet in compressor to create uncompressed audio
4) bring both into FCP. Replace the compressed audio with the uncompressed
5) Edit - but be aware that it'll be very choppy.

And you could be done here - or pass it off to compressor/quicktime. If you have the space, I'd suggest changing the sequence format to uncompressed or Prores, just so any graphics/effects occur in better than DV color space (unless that's what you're going to do wiht it at the end - cut it to DV tape. This is the suggested workflow with HDV.)
posted by filmgeek at 12:17 PM on September 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

Thanks, Filmgeek, great answer. It explains what I am seeing.

I think your suggestion of replacing the audio is the right one for quick and dirty editing. On my machines the video is not too choppy. Thank you!
posted by unSane at 6:18 PM on September 1, 2008

Having experimented, ProRes even on medium is MASSIVELY better than DV Stream as a target encoding for the converted video.
posted by unSane at 7:13 PM on September 1, 2008