C300 Review & FCPX MXF import

[Jeremy Garchow]

Apple released a “Camera Import SDK” with .1. Hopefully, Canon has enough information to release an import plug for fcpx.

The camera looks pretty cool.

[Dennis Radeke]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Apple released a “Camera Import SDK” with .1. Hopefully, Canon has enough information to release an import plug for fcpx.

The camera looks pretty cool.”

I have not played with the files myself, but my understanding is that C300 files work in Premiere Pro CS5.5 already.

[David Cherniack]

I can confirm that Canon 4:2:2 files work natively in PrPro CS5+.

David
AllinOneFilms.com

[Richard Cardonna]

Yes Philip Bloom says in the video that it works with cs.5.5

RC

[Dennis Radeke]

[Bena Azura] “MXF Converter for Mac is the best tools on Mac that helps you convert MXF to MOV, MP4, AVI, MPG, etc for Editing with FCP X, FCP 6/7, FCE 4, iMovie, Avid, Adobe Premiere Pro, etc on Mac Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion.”

Premiere Pro supports Panasonic, Sony, Canon and most camera flavors of MXF natively out of the box, so no conversion is necessary for Adobe. Just a clarification.

If you do need to convert and you happen to have Adobe Production Premium, have you considered Adobe Media Encoder which you have? It allows for background batch conversion to almost any flavor you need. Failing that, MXF Converter is great.

Dennis – Adobe guy

[Joe Szopa]

Got my hands on a demo camera last night, and shot some video of Venice Beach for ISO tests.

Used the FCPX Plugin (Canon XF) and the video conversion looks horrible. I know the master video shouldn’t look this bad, so trying to figure out whether this is a monitor issue, or how FCPX transcodes the media. The video looks fine when landing on a single frame, but while playing back, it artifacts badly in the lines, almost as if it’s a proxy playback. Anyone else have ideas as to why; or better solutions to transcoding and importing the media into FCPX?

Thanks,

Joe

[Steve Connor]

Do you have “high quality playback” on?

Steve Connor
“FCPX Agitator”
Adrenalin Television

[Joe Szopa]

Steve,

Thanks for that. I did not. Duh.

🙂

[Steve Connor]

So how was the camera?

Steve Connor
“FCPX Agitator”
Adrenalin Television

[Joe Szopa]

PROS: Tight body, great low-light response, I found shooting at ISO 1600 still provides excellent picture quality. We shot in some really dark areas, and ramped the ISO up to 20K just to see how much light it can pick up. It is quite impressive. Easy to build and take down. LCD Monitor is plenty big to give you a good view for focusing. Mag button on pistol grip makes it easy to zoom in to grab focus. Lots of customizable features, and menus are easy to navigate. There are three different ways to do everything, including controlling the menu. LCD Display looks very clear and bright. Chroma and Luminance overlays were extremely useful. Buttons are customizable. Interval recording was easy to set up for time lapses. Camera is very quiet. FCPX plugin recognizes a C300 formatted CF card as a camera, making importing video a piece of cake.

CONS: (Nit-picky, I suppose) It will take some time to get used to the button positions. Set up for photos is a hassle. The LCD display connectors are too small and difficult to remove with fingers. I could see this being a commonly damaged component. The external display on the back of the camera is under the viewfinder and difficult to look at from a top angle. Function button allows toggling between white balance, ISO, and shutter settings. Would prefer to have those be more instantly accessible on the camera body as separate buttons — supposedly those controllable through the wifi/iPad app, which will be super cool. Doesn’t shoot 4K. Boo.