Versatility with Video Editing

Need some moving pictures in your life? iStock’s video footage collection has been growing steadily since its launch in 2006 with more than 87,000 video footage clips. If you’re already the proud owner of an iStock video file, you may have noticed that editing video has a few more technical hoops to jump through than editing photos before you can start to work with it.

For those of you editing in Final Cut Pro who have downloaded HD 720 files from iStock, only to find that FCP does not recognize the file, don’t give up.

When you get a message saying “File Error: 1 file(s) recognized, 0 access denied, 1 unknown,” here’s what you need to do to fix the problem:

1. Open the file in Quicktime and choose File: Export.
2. In the bottom of the resulting window, click the drop-down menu to select “Movie to QuickTime Movie”.
3. Click the Options button beside that drop-down menu to view the Movie Settings panel.
4. Click on the Settings button. The Compression type should be photo JPEG. Click on the Frame Rate drop-down and make sure it is set to exactly the frame rate advertised on the iStock download page (For example, if you downloaded a 29.97 file, then select 29.97).
5. Check that the Quality Slider is set to best then click OK.
6. Pick a location for the export and click Save.

This problem is not very common and only occurs with Final Cut Pro, but if this doesn’t solve your conundrum, please don’t hesitate to create a Support Ticket.