In a perfect world we’d always have camera originals, but realistically a time will come in which you need to download video from a variety of strange sources online. While there’s plenty of ways to do this, issues can arise when you convert it for editing.

After I download a clip I always convert it in Quicktime to match my editing sequence (normally, 1920×1080/ 29.97fps) but I’ve seen a disturbing trend. After conversion, even though within QuickTime I chose to adjust the framerate to 29.97 some clips will play correctly in finder/QuickTime but within FCP they appear slow, or out of sync with the audio.

I’ve discovered 2 ways to remedy this, using compressor for the conversion OR the faster method of conforming within Cinema Tools. This is the same process you would use for conforming some 60fps footage to the proper slomo for editing…

How to convert 1 clip

1. File > Open Clip
2. When the window opens in the lower right quadrant select “conform” and select the framerate you want to be
3. File> Close

That’s it! It rewrites the metadata and losslessly fixes your clip in a matter of seconds, no matter the length.

Converting many clips

1. Create a folder and load just the files you need to adjust into it
2. File > Batch Conform
3. Select any video file in that folder
4. Choose a framerate to conform to