Re: Dropped Frames in FCP

You can use QT if you want.

For overall ease of use, speed and quality I'd say use mpeg streamclip (squared 5 makes it). it's free super easy and is built upon QT. Google it and you will find it.

As far as codecs inside of FCP, keep pretty much all MPEG formats (mpeg-1, mpeg-2, mpeg-4 - H264 is MPEG-4 variant) out. Exceptions such as HDV (Mpeg-2 variant), kind of, and AVC-Intra (I frame version of H264) exist.

For transcoding H264, I personally, like transcoding to PHOTO-jpeg 100% (not supported by RT Extreme, but is I frame and really clean). For what it is it's small and you don't really lose anything. Render times are big, will probably be pretty big in HDV no matter what though due to the Long GOP encoding. You can also use Pro Res, also a very good option.

The Cow has tons of great stuff, Ken Stone, the FCP manual covers some of this stuff and wikipedia...

Tons of places to get good information, I don't have one source.