Three things come to mind right away.
- First and foremost, never EVER attempt to edit mpeg2 video in FCP. Not ever. You need to convert it to something else. More on that in a bit.
- Second, mpeg2 video typically has multiplexed, or muxed, audio. The audio is embedded in the video track. So there's no audio track available to QT player or FCP. You need to convert it to something else. Which leads me to....
- The way you phrased your question: "Will I have to convert them to .mov first?" The phrasing reveals a very primitive knowledge of media containers and codecs. The extension .mov indicates a quicktime movie which is a media container. It can contain a variety of media, which can be encoded and decoded in a wide variety of ways. These various ways are known as codecs.
To get your files properly prepared for editing in FCP you'll need to convert the mpegg2's to Quicktime movies in the ProRes422 codec. There are a variety of utilities that can do it.
Dave LaRonde
Sr. Promotion Producer
KCRG-TV (ABC) Cedar Rapids, IA
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