(Excuse me while I geek out.)

My friend managed to get me the G5 he’d been mentioning, and I’ve been having fun the last few weeks getting it up and running. I’m even getting used to keyboard shortcuts and some of Mac’s eccentricities. But last night I spent an hour fighting with it, and the battle reminded me of all the things I dislike about Apple.

I purchased a Sony HDR-CX12 last summer and, on the whole, have enjoyed using it. The video quality is solid, although I haven’t played with the high-def video. I know I’m not getting the most out of the camera by doing so, but I bought an HD camera more for future-proofing than to use it right now.

Likewise, I’ve been playing with Final Cut Pro on the Mac (thanks again to my friend) and enjoying that, too. I had experience using it in college and so it was nice to get off of a PC and back onto a more sophisticated media editing platform.

Except…

Except the CX12 shoots video in MPEG-2, a video format that isn’t super-common, but also isn’t particularly rare.

Macs won’t play MPEG-2 video.

Now, that’s actually a slight exaggeration. VLC on a Mac plays MPEG-2 just fine. But, by default, a Mac will look at an MPEG-2 file, shrug it’s shoulders, and say, “What, you actually want me to play video files?” Apple does sell an MPEG-2 codec – in fact, that link is the second thing that comes up when searching for MPEG-2 – but for the Sony-produced MPEG files it’ll only play the video. Heaven forbid you want to hear the movies you produced.

My options right now are:

1. Convert the MPEG-2 to something else. Pros: Free, works. Cons: Takes time, disk space, and may result in decreased video quality.
2. Demux the files (i.e. rip the audio so I can then import that into FCP separately). Pros: Free, works. Cons: Takes time, disk space.
3. Get Adobe Premiere to edit video. Pros: Works without converting the video. Cons: Costs money.

Right now I’m planning on doing #2, but I’m pretty frustrated about the whole thing.

Goes to show Apple’s motto: If you want to do things our way, it’ll be amazing! (If not, tough shit.)

One Response to “Incredibly Frustrating”

1. The Thang Blog » Toys! (A post about computers) says:

   January 23, 2011 at 3:13 pm

   [...] and two monitors, along with video editing software that can process my stupid camera’s obscure file format natively. What I’d like do do is [...]

   Reply