When I import video into Final Cut Pro 7 from the Inspire 1 and play it back, the video is slow and choppy. The video is in .MOV format. Should I convert to another format for use with Final Cut?

What did you record at? 4K ? 1080p?  Frame rate?  What are the system specs on your Mac?

adam1 Posted at 2016-5-7 12:20
What did you record at? 4K ? 1080p?  Frame rate?  What are the system specs on your Mac?

Recorded at 1080 at 30 fps. 4 gb of ram on Mac, video plays fine before importing into Final Cut Pro

It sounds like you need more horse power I'm afraid.  thats barely enough to run the latest system etc. I feel. There should be some threads about video and a good machine set up.

Good luck.

Try converting the .mov files to a Final Cut Pro 7 prores format using AppGeeker converter.

Ant2596 Posted at 2016-5-8 00:33
Recorded at 1080 at 30 fps. 4 gb of ram on Mac, video plays fine before importing into Final Cut P ...

Not nearly powerful enough to edit with Final Cut Pro. I just bought a 15" MacBook Pro Retnia with 16GB of Onboard 1600 MHz DDR3L RAM,  2.5Ghz I7 processor, AMD R9 M370X, and 1TB PCle of storage. Cost a lot but for what I use it for it runs everything perfectly. I also store everything on a Thunderbolt connected 1TB LaCie external drive which I actually post process off of since the transfer rate is so fast. Then I store the finished movies on a 2TB Apple Time Machine. Mac's are expensive but you get what you pay for.

I followed this tutorial to get my problem solved. You can have a try. Good luck

When running Final Cut Pro or other processing software such as Pix4D you really need a minimum of 16GB ram.  I currently use a Retina 15" Mac with 16GB ram and no problems.

So, nobody really answered your question except rickleman but to elaborate on what he said:

You want to convert the .MOV or .MP4 that the Inspire gives you (native format H.264) to a ProRes 422 Intermediate file (in an MOV file). You can do this with something like MPEG Streamclip (http://www.squared5.com), which is the standard app that many use for this when working with FCP7.

Basically, take all your MP4/MOV files from the Inspire, use MPEG Streamclip to convert them to ProRes 422 MOV files (1080p resolution, square pixel of course - you can use standard ProRes 422 or you can lower to 422 LT or 422 Proxy for rough work or increase to 422 HQ for production work).

There is no audio track so you can skip that.

Those 422 files can then be pulled into Final Cut Pro 7 and you'll be able to edit them without issue. I've edited many a 1080p project on similar systems (Core 2 Duo / 4GB of RAM, etc) so you won't have any problems as long as the media is in the correct format. FCP7 just doesn't handle native/compressed camera formats properly (H.264 from the Inspire, for example) so that's your issue. Incidentally, this was all heavily refined and improved in FCPX (it will edit natively fairly well and handles automatic format conversion on demand) but all this improvement depends on increased computing and GPU compute power.

That should get you going, no issues.

FWIW even higher end / modern systems running FCPX are generally better performing when you use optimized/intermediate formats. Converting your files for editing when on anything but trivial projects (a few dozen objects or so) is really standard practice. Case in point, my home workstation is a Mac Pro with dual GPU's and 32GB of RAM and I still convert everything to optimized (ProRes 422 HQ) in FCPX for large projects because it's just a lot faster to work with and a lot easier when you start to get thousands of objects in your timeline.

Only Final Cut Pro X 10.1 and later version has the capability to handle 4K resolution video. For FCP X or FCP 6/7 users, you are recommended to compress 4K to 1080p for smooth rendering and editing process of DJI Inspire 1 4K with FCP 7. In addition, the H.264 codec used by DJI Inspire 1 is not an ideal editing format for FCP 7, it is ideal for you to rewrap it to Apple Prores codec for FCP 7.

Maxwhiteuv Posted at 2016-8-12 06:06
Only Final Cut Pro X 10.1 and later version has the capability to handle 4K resolution video. For FC ...

He's dealing with 1080p media ("Recorded at 1080", per his second comment).

RearViewMirror Posted at 2016-5-9 12:04
Not nearly powerful enough to edit with Final Cut Pro. I just bought a 15" MacBook Pro Retnia with ...

WOW, that's a nice setup. Jealous.

I'm never done any converting, but my 2011 Macbook Pro would even play 4k and was pretty terrible at 1080.
I switched of the HDD for a 500GB SSD and went to 16GB of RAM and it now plays and edits 4k but just barely .

DJI-Ken Posted at 2016-8-13 04:04
WOW, that's a nice setup. Jealous.

Thanks. I do all of my editing on this computer. I just added a Wacom Pro Tablet which helps tremendously to the workflow. Not only do I do arieal footage I have a little over $15k in camera and video equipment and this handles all of it with ease and the speed I'm looking for.





10 Stop Filter for long exposures during the day. Not counting all my graduated filters and a ton of extra lens's.



Video head


And my slider which extends to more than twice it's length. I use this for a lot of timelapse videos.




Just a small portion of what I use.

Quick sample photo at 5:30am sunrise

Sunrise 3 by T Productions, on Flickr

RearViewMirror Posted at 2016-8-13 22:20
Thanks. I do all of my editing on this computer. I just added a Wacom Pro Tablet which helps tremen ...

Very impressive, all I have is a nice point & shoot

DJI Inspire 1 captures 4K videos in MP4, MOV format. But the problem is, H.264 encoded MP4 or MOV file format from DJI Inspire 1 is beyond the compatibility of FCP.  What's more,  Final Cut Pro 7 is not able to support 4K video. Thus, you can't get a flawless 4K workflow in most cases. To solve the problem, you need to convert DJI Inspire 1 4K H.264 files to FCP 7 most compatible format with proper video settings(1080p is recommended).

Check out a simple tutorial on DJI Inspire 1 workflow to get some clues.

It seems that your computer is too old or slow to get the best editing  for FCP 7, there is a simple but professional solution called Pavtube HD Video Converter for Mac, which can easily convert DJI Inspire 1/1 Pro to FCP 7 best favorable Apple Prores codec in various different file types. if you want to do some rough editing, you can select to output "Apple Prores Proxy)(*.mov)" or "Apple Prores (LT)(*.mov)" format to save more space and bandwidth.Here is a guide:

Everyone keeps mentioning different applications to convert your videos into Prores but Final Cut Pro X can generate optimised Prores files on import, it's how I edit all of my videos.  The drawback to using Prores is that it tends to use gobs of storage space.

Thanks for your help everyone.

RearViewMirror Posted at 2016-5-8 20:04
Not nearly powerful enough to edit with Final Cut Pro. I just bought a 15" MacBook Pro Retnia with 16GB of Onboard 1600 MHz DDR3L RAM,  2.5Ghz I7 processor, AMD R9 M370X, and 1TB PCle of storage. Cost a lot but for what I use it for it runs everything perfectly. I also store everything on a Thunderbolt connected 1TB LaCie external drive which I actually post process off of since the transfer rate is so fast. Then I store the finished movies on a 2TB Apple Time Machine. Mac's are expensive but you get what you pay for.

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Most certainly agree with you. And, they don't break