The easiest way to get that wack-o footage you recorded using your mothers underwater camera into Final Cut is to first run it through MPEG-Streamclip and convert it into a format that Final Cut likes.
The final answer to what that format is may depend on what style of work you’re making. If you’re doing a lot of compositing then I’d stick with a format that works well with colors. That usually means ProRes, but as with most HD formats ProRes comes in a lot of flavors. Most of the time good old vanilla is fine. Or for those of us on a file storage diet ProRes LT might even be a good choice.
Almost never will you want to bump up the quality to anything higher than this. The concept of using an uncompressed file format (or ProRes 4:4:4:4) to increase the quality of your movie is, well, it’s just plain wrong. You movie will NEVER look better that it does right now, our goal is just to make Final Cut more happy by using Intra-Frame formats instead of the GOP formats that a lot of DSLR or Flips or other H.264 cameras shoot in. We’re just trying to convert our unruly files into a personality that will play well with others, no more than that.
And always remember: your mom’s shooting HD and you’re downloading movies off of the internet from YouTube. Who’s the filmmaker now? Seriously.
