5D Mark II import problems. Any advice, suggestions?

[Bret Williams]

Why would you give such inaccurate information? Personal experience? How many long form 2 or 3 camera multicam h264 edits have you done in FCP X?

I’ve even done it on my 2006 MacPro 1,1 without much issue. It’s certainly pretty seamless on my 2011 iMac or my 2012 iMac. I’ve transcoded and not seen any noticeable difference either.

[Tangier Clarke]

Hey Dave. the format is H.264, 1920×1080, FPS = 23.98, Linear PCM, 16 bit, 48kHz, Stereo, little endian signed integer. Data rate is 47.1 Mbit/s on a 3 minute clip.

Though this is from Quicktime X, not 7. I had to rebuild my drive in January and have yet to put QT 7 back.

Tangier

[Jeremy Garchow]

Are there stills (jpegs) in the directory?

[Tangier Clarke]

I am going to try just dragging the MOV files in manually. I started to wonder if for some reason, FCP X doesn’t like dealing with all of the other files in the “100EOS5D” folder such as CR2 and THM files.

Tangier

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Tangier Clarke] “CR2 “

I’d try removing any and all stills (raw or jpeg). THM files are OK.

Jeremy

[Tangier Clarke]

OK folks, so testing on the same reel that gave me problems here’s what I’ve noticed:

Workflow 1
Direct FCP X to reel top-level reel folder on hard drive using IMPORT MEDIA
Result = Import errors occur on some “.MOV” files. It seems to ignore THM files and handle CR2 files just fine.

Workflow 2
Isolated “.MOV” files in reel folder on drive
Dragged “.MOV” into event in FCP X (settings set to optimize and separate stereo/mono)
Result = import successful, transcode successful.

I don’t think I’ve isolated a culprit yet, but I am going to try additional reels to see if I can find some consistency.

Tangier

[Oliver Peters]

[Bret Williams] “Personal experience?”

Yes. I have been dissatisfied with the performance of H264 files in EVERY edit system I’ve done this in and on various machines. This includes FCP X. Multicam no. Your tolerance for H264 as an edit format might be greater than mine.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Jeremy Garchow]

FCP7s log and transfer still works as a great HDSLR prep application.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Tangier Clarke] “Workflow 1
Direct FCP X to reel top-level reel folder on hard drive using IMPORT MEDIA
Result = Import errors occur on some “.MOV” files. It seems to ignore THM files and handle CR2 files just fine.”

What is the actual file path here? Any funny characters or anything like that in the directory names?

[Bret Williams]

What is it doing that you dislike? Is it bogging down? Is it crashing? Are you not getting enough RT? I use it all the time as many others I know do as well and I dont really see a difference between the performance of it and ProRes except ProRes is eating up a buttload more drive space. I’d rather work with the originals whenever possible.

But if you must use it as ProRes, why would you go through a third party transcoder and not just hit the transcode button in FCP? Then you can work with transcoded media to your hearts delight, and only have to backup the h264 files. Kind of the reverse of working with 4k. 🙂