FCP/Macbook Mro/7D Workflow questions
 

Our main editing rig is a pc with Adobee premiere, but I recently picked up a used Macbook pro from a friend. It's 2.33 with 2 gigs of ram ( plan to get 4 gigs), and I have a 500 gig Avstar quad external drive , with all the connections ( firewire 800, etc), to store and edit the projects. The internal drive is only 150 gigs.

One of the reasons I bought the Mac from him is the ability to view the files in Quicktime, without having to transcode or down res. But once I pulled the clips into FCP, they play just as jerky as trying to play mov files on a pc.They did play normally when I viewd them in quicktime. ( On the pc, we transcode the mov files with neoscene, which turns them into editable avi's).

What exactly is the workflow to be able to view and edi the files in realtime in FCP? Do you import them and pull them into the timeline and then process them all? If so, what do you use?
Thanks
Bruce Yarock

You should grab all the 7D clips and "send" them to Compressor to change them to a ProRes codec. Fast and simple.
You cannot edit the raw H.264 files on the FCP timeline without some playback issues on a Macbook with only 2G ram. Also if they are on an external firewire drive then this is way too slow. The video card in a Macbook will also have an affect playback at 1080p size.
You can also use the free program, Streamclip, which is fast and has an enormous amount of options as well as ProRes, which is the best format for FCP users.
I use a 8-processor Mac with 32G of ram and 4Tb sata-raid with realtime playback even on raw files, but when I am on the road I use the same Macbook you just bought and ProRes.

Hey Bruce,

Yes, you can send them to Compressor or even create a Compressor droplet to convert the h.264 to ProRes to edit. Compressor takes a long time compared to MPEG Streamclip (freeware). Barefeets actually tested and Compressor 3.5 is slower than version 3!

My Macbook Pro is fast enough for the Quicktime previewing too, which is what I do right after I shoot. I'll then batch convert them to ProRes (my favorite codec for editing on the Mac) in MPEG Streamclip and file the h.264 elsewhere in an "originals" folder.

You can also try the new Canon EOS E1 batch capture plugin for FCP that allows you to add timecode and metadata to the clips as well as make disc images of your cards. The speed of this plugin is faster than Compressor but not as fast as MPEG Streamclip. Canon's plugin is the only way you can transcode part of a lengthy clip (only good takes) while keeping the original source in place (like we used to do with tapes).

Using the Canon EOS Movie plugin-E1 with Final Cut Pro | Paul Joy

YouTube - Canon 7D Final cut pro EOS plugin Ingest Workflow

I always dump all the H.264 files to a hard drive and keep them as a backup.

Then I use MPEG Streamclip to transcode all the footage to ProRes 422.

MPEG Streamclip has a great "batch list" function so you can set up where you want the files to go & which codec to encode to - then when you get your H.264 in you simply drop it on the bottom of the batch list.