Editing efficiently with optimized and proxy clips
It seems that there are almost as many video codecs and containers as there are actual spoken languages in the world—H.264, MPEG-2, AVCHD, and so on. Some are made for editing and some for delivery. Final Cut Pro works with some like a knife through butter, and with others like hammering through steel. Worse yet, sometimes as an editor you are handed a project that deals with multiple formats at once. While the multilingual Final Cut can handle such a task and mix formats in one project, it's far more efficient if it only has to focus on one, easy-to-understand language at a time. In turn, Apple has made it very simple to streamline this cumbersome issue and create edit-efficient versions of our media upon import (or after).
How to do it...
1. You have two possible routes here to start. If you are importing files directly from your hard drive, open the Import window by going to File | Import | Files... (Command + Shift + I). If you are importing...
