Apple Final Cut Pro 7 - Manual (Page 1667)

This chapter covers the following:
• Choosing a Videotape Format and Equipment for Output (p. 1667)
• Output Requirements (p. 1668)
• Methods for Output to Tape in Final Cut Pro (p. 1669)
• Setting Up Your Editing System to Output to Tape (p. 1671)
Tape is still the most common means of acquisition, output, and transfer for professional
projects. Final Cut Pro allows you to output sequences or clips to tape at any phase of
your project.
Choosing a Videotape Format and Equipment for Output
The tape format you choose for output affects the capture settings of your clips, your
sequence settings, and the equipment you need. Before you begin your project, try to
anticipate the format of your final master tape, as well as the format of any
work-in-progress tapes you may distribute to other people on your team.
The most common output formats include:
• DV: The DV format family includes DV, DVCAM, DVCPRO, DVCPRO 50, and DVCPRO HD.
DV formats are compressed video formats designed with nonlinear video editing in
mind. Final Cut Pro allows you to edit and output native DV signals, because a DV file
on your scratch disk is virtually identical to the same DV information on tape. When
you output DV from your computer, video and audio are combined into a DV stream,
sent to a VTR or camcorder via FireWire, and then recorded on tape.
• Uncompressed digital and professional analog video formats: These are formats such as
Betacam SP (analog), Digital Betacam, D-5, or HDCAM. VTRs for these formats support
several different video interface connections, such as component analog (Betacam SP),
SDI (Digital Betacam, D-5), and HD-SDI (HDCAM). Final Cut Pro requires a third-party
video interface to connect your computer to the input connections of the VTR. Unlike
DV, which uses the same native file format on tape and disk, the codecs used by
Final Cut Pro to store uncompressed video are not the same as the native signals
recorded on these tape formats.
1667
Preparing to Output to Tape 100