Importing from Sony Z7 CF Card
 

I'm really just getting started in terms of editing in HD. I'm on an iMac with 10.6.8 and FCP X and I'm trying to import some footage shot last night. (I shoot in 1080i ... nothing special.)

I tried to import the DV files and FC said that it couldn't import. I converted them to Prores using Stream Clip, but that ended up with a strange message when I went to drop it into the project.

I'm surely missing an easy step here. The on-line manual didn't really provide any help that I could find.

Thanks

Re: Importing from Sony Z7 CF Card
 

I've been gone for a while but I wanted to check back on this to see if anyone could answer the question.

Today I took some test footage and converted it to a quicktime file in Streamclip ... then imported the footage. I have the footage, but it's pretty blurry even though perfectly sharp when paused.

Is there someone that might have an idea as to how to correct?

Thank you

Re: Importing from Sony Z7 CF Card
 

Dont' import it. use log and transfer, also download the utility MRC1 from Sony, I'll check if I can find the link for you. If your using the lower version of FCP which has no log and transfer use Clipwrap to encode the footage to Proress, then import.

Re: Importing from Sony Z7 CF Card
 

From what I can tell ... with X all you can do is import from camera or import files. I don't see any option for Log and Transfer like the older versions.

Re: Importing from Sony Z7 CF Card
 

I was in the impression that FCP X can digest any video codec without encoding, so I was wrong then, perhaps your only option is to get the Clipwarp.

Re: Importing from Sony Z7 CF Card
 

You know ... I was under the same understanding when I downloaded it. :-(

Re: Importing from Sony Z7 CF Card
 

Scott, make sure first and foremost that you have the entire folder structure as it appears on the card.
Secondly, FCPX cant work with native .m2t files from the Sony. However when you bring the footage into FCPX, you want to import it either with no conversion, but FCPX will have to re-wrap the footage into a .mov wrapper.

Or you can bring into FCPX and transcode to ProRes Proxy or ProResLT.

FCPX can work with native AVCHD files, but I still fid it best to convert to ProRes for editing. As a matter of fact I convert all of my footage to ProResLT in ClipWrap or Episode.

The reason I don't let FCPX handle this is that FCPX does not let you transcode to ProResLT, only ProRes422 or 444 or Proxy. I have no need for 422 or 444, as LT is plenty fine with me.

Kind of sucks, as it wastes some work time, as I could be working while FCPX is transcoding in the backgrond. FCPX can export as ProResLT, but not transcode.

Hopefully Apple will address this in the future.

Re: Importing from Sony Z7 CF Card
 

So is ClipWrap better than Streamclip when going to prores? The delivery is going to be SD. I tried converting to prores in Streamclip and pulled the files into Final Cut. The result was a very blurry video.

Re: Importing from Sony Z7 CF Card
 

Scott, I don't know why your footage would be blurry.
Are you shooting in DV 16:9 and then converting to ProRes 16:9 DV.

I haven't worked with Streamclip in a while, but have had good luck with it as well. I prefer to work in Clipwrap, because I can join selected spanned clips together to create 1 file if needed. And also because it's simple to transcode or rewrap footage, as you don't have any control over the settings. So you get consistent results every time. However if I need to down convert footage I use Episode to do so, as it gives me tremendous results. But in most cases I always work with HD footage, edit HD footage, export as HD (ProResLT), and then down convert at the end (from compressor or Episode).

As for Clipwrap, it works in one of two ways.
1. Rewrap the .m2t file in a .mov wrapper. All Clipwrap will do is rewrap the file in an .mov Quicktime wrapper so there's no transcoding going on. This is blazingly fast for each file (you can even join spanned files together). If your system is fast enough to work with rewraped native AVCHD files, then this is a decent option.

2. Transcode the .mt file to ProResLT. If your footage was shot as DV, then all Clipwrap will do is transcode the footage to a ProResLT .mov file. You shouldn't notice much as far as degradation is concerned. BTW you can also join together spanned clips (to make 1 file) while transcoding.

I recommend ProResLT, because it saves on disk space compared to ProRes 422. And the image quality is not evidently discernible.

If your footage was shot in HD, then Clipwrap CAN'T downres the file in ProRes, as you don't have any control over the settings.

However you can transcode the footage to DVCPRO if you like, and it will downconvert the footage to native DV for you.

Re: Importing from Sony Z7 CF Card
 

Like many of you I expected .M2T support to accompany recent FCPX 10.0.3 update but no such luck. I'd read a post from one contributor who'd claimed that they'd spoken to Sony and they would be coming up with a support plugin.

As neither support from Apple or Sony have yet to materialize I gave Sony a call to find out for myself. I spoke to a rep from broadcast support who explained that Sony would not be releasing a plugin to support .M2T files. He did explain, now take it this is from Sony not Apple, that Apple would be including .M2T support as part of their next update to FCPX coming in April or May.

He went on to say that Apple's focus was first to support XD Cam formats and HDV users would have to be patient.

We'll see if that holds true. For now Clip Wrap will continue to be my workaround.

I hope to see a solution that incorporates a clip-able log and transfer viewer that would allow me to cut out unwanted media at the ingest stage. A little extra time at ingest can save a lot of $ on storage.

Tim

Re: Importing from Sony Z7 CF Card
 

Clipwrap simply wraps the mts file in a quicktime wrapper, so the codec is still mpeg 2 (HDV codec.) FCP 6 & 7 always worked well with it, but I have noticed many issues with my archived HDV quicktime files since the 06-2011 security update. My solution has been to use my time machine backup of the Macintosh HD/System/Quicktime folder to get the earlier versions of the codecs back. The same thing happened to my Alexa acquired ProRes files.