I was considering renting a C300 Mark II in Final Cut Pro for a project. I’ve read around the web that some FCP users were encountering issues importing files. Anything I should be aware of from a post-production point of view?
Digging around the net, I know that Canon EOS C300 Mark II uses Canon’s new XF-AVC codec to record video files and package them in an .MXF wrapper. The XF-AVC uses the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 video compression format, efficiently recording 4K, 2K and HD video to regular memory cards while achieving a high data compression rate and preserving image quality, which is much difficult for Final Cut Pro to recognize and support. You can’t work C300 Mark II XF-AVC files in FCP properly. The best solution is to convert Canon Mark II 4K video to Apple ProRes, the optimal format for Final Cut Pro X, Final Cut Pro 7.
In this case, U2USoft Video Converter Ultimate for Mac can help you out. It lets you transcode C300 Mark II 4K videos in .mxf to Apple ProRes, Apple InterMediate Codec, DNxHD, MPEG-2 and more, so as to smoothly add them into FCP, iMovie, FCE, Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere Pro to do further editing. Download and install the program and follow the complete guide below.
How to Transcode Canon C300 Mark II 4K MXF to ProRes for FCP X/7/6?
Step 1: Load source footage
Launch the program and click “Add ” button to import the MXF files from Canon C300 Mark II to the top 4K Video Converter Mac.
Step 2: Select output format
Click on the “Format” bar and get the dropdown menu, then move your pointer to choose “Final Cut Pro> Apple PreRes 422” or “Apple ProRes 422 HQ” or “Apple ProRes 4444” as the output format.
Tip: If you want to set some parameters for the output profile, you could click the “Settings” button to set the output bitrate, encode, frame rate, resolution, sample rate, channels, etc.
Step 3: Start conversion
Tap Convert button to start transcoding Canon C300 Mark II MXF to ProRes .mov for Final Cut Pro on Mac OS X.
Once the conversion completes, you can click “Open” to find the .MOV videos which can be directly imported to FCP. As you see, now you can import and edit Canon C300 Mark II 4K clips in Final Cut Pro X or FCP 7 without problems.