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Popular Formats
Final Cut Pro and Color support a wide range of image file formats. The most popular
include TIFF, PICT, TGA, and JPEG. If you’re planning to use JPEG files, it’s best to use the
least amount of compression possible to avoid artifacts in your final program.
Final Cut Pro and Motion are also capable of using layered or flattened Photoshop files
in different ways. See the Final Cut Pro and Motion documentation for more information.
Method of Ingest
Still images are imported into Final Cut Pro using the Import command. In Motion, you
use the File Browser to find media that you want to add to your project.
Note: In Final Cut Pro, TIFF, PICT, TGA, and JPEG files are affected by the Imported Still/RGB
Video Gamma setting in the Editing tab of the User Preferences window. This preference
setting determines the level of gamma that is applied to these clips when they’re imported,
although you can always change the gamma level setting in the Item Properties or Browser
window. For more information, see the Final Cut Pro documentation.
Clip Organization
You can use Final Cut Server to organize still images to share among multiple Final Cut Pro
users. If you organize your images using iPhoto, you can access your albums and library
in Motion from within the Library tab. (See the Motion documentation for more
information.)
Tracking and Organizational Information
Still images are tracked by filename.
Ingesting Animation and Broadcast Design Files
If your program incorporates computer animation, broadcast design, or previously captured
archival footage files from a variety of sources, you can import the files directly into
Final Cut Pro or Motion as long as they’re in a compatible QuickTime format. In addition,
Motion is compatible with a variety of image sequence formats. In some cases, you must
install third-party QuickTime components to use QuickTime media from other editing
and compositing environments.
Other formats can be converted to an appropriate QuickTime codec for your project using
Compressor. For more information about format conversion using Compressor, see
“Format Conversion When Finishing Mixed-Format Sequences.”
43Chapter 2 Ingesting and Organizing Your Media