FCPX & Sony RX100V 4K?

[Noah Kadner]

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202252

Noah

FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
FCP Exchange – FCPX Workshops
XinTwo – FCPX Training

[Ray Sherman]

Thanks for the link Noah. I do have the latest Pro Video Formats installed. I’m assuming the 4K XAVC S 30p 100M didn’t import natively due to showing as a H.264 codec. My Sony PXW-X70 footage imported natively as XAVC QFHD 30p which is 4K. This is confirmed due to it showing up under the FCPX codec column in the “Media Import” window. I’d like to add, I haven’t changed any settings in FCPX…… My 2016 15″ MacBook Pro is also maxed out and plays back the X70 4K flawlessly. Hopefully someone here can give me some type of an idea what to try next. At this point, all I’m doing is archiving my video on a couple backup drives. Thanks again for your help and have a great Memorial Day. Ray

[Ray Sherman]

I re-checked my RX100v settings and created a new clip and tried importing directly off the SD card into FCPX to make an archive. Once again, it shows my video as being a H.264 codec instead of XAVC S. I do have v2.0.5 Pro Video Formats installed. I dropped it into Applications in the Finder window. Being fairly new to Mac, maybe I done this wrong. Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s just something simple……. hopefully. Thanks, Ray

[Ray Sherman]

Interesting….. I just imported off my SD card into iMovie to see what would happen. Comes up as .MOV

[Joe Marler]

[Ray Sherman] “I re-checked my RX100v settings and created a new clip and tried importing directly off the SD card into FCPX to make an archive. Once again, it shows my video as being a H.264 codec instead of XAVC S. “

XAVC-S and AVCHD both use some variant of the H.264 codec. So they are all H.264, which is why a codec inspection tool will show H.264 or AVC. XAVC-S and AVCHD are just two different wrapper formats. XAVC-S is fine for the RX100V. If you have a choice of bit rates and resolution, pick the highest one. On our A6500 and A7RII cameras we use UHD 4k at 29.97p at 100 megabits/sec.

We copy the video files to a hard drive, then import using “leave files in place”. That is not a good practice for AVCHD but for XAVC-S it works fine. You can also import from the card or make an archive copy like you described.

To obtain smooth 4k editing performance (whether Premiere or FCPX) it is often necessary to transcode to proxy. Optimized media is not needed, but proxy usually is. This can be done during import or afterward.

[Ray Sherman]

Thanks Joe…… My RX100V settings are as follows;
File Format: XAVC S 4K
Record Setting: 30p 100M
In FCPX’s Media Import window it shows H.264 Codec & MPEG-4 as File Type. Basically, all I want to do is copy my video natively without any quality loss. I was always under the impression that H.264/MPEG-4 is less quality over 4K. Thanks again, Ray

[Ray Sherman]

The following are a couple screen shots showing you what I’m talking about. Thanks, Ray

[Joe Marler]

[Ray Sherman] “In FCPX’s Media Import window it shows H.264 Codec & MPEG-4 as File Type. Basically, all I want to do is copy my video natively without any quality loss. I was always under the impression that H.264/MPEG-4 is less quality over 4K. “

All you need to do is import it. H.264 is your camera’s native codec. That is the best available quality for that camera at 4k. You do not need to transcode to optimized media for quality reasons. If you need to transcode to proxy for performance reasons, that is OK.

Your only real decision is whether to import from the card, or make an archive then import, or copy the folder tree to disk then import from there, or copy just the video files to disk and import from there. None of those affects image quality.

In theory the best practice is keeping the entire folder tree (which an archive or import from card also does) because some metadata is stored there, but FCPX will not import from a tree using “leave files in place”. It will import from a copy of the video files using “leave files in place”. I would never do this for AVCHD but for XAVC-S it seems to work OK and it saves space and makes import faster.

[Ray Sherman]

Awesome!! Now I can rest easy knowing that my video is being imported natively. You’ve been a great help in which I sincerely appreciate it. Thank you, Ray 🙂

[Sunderland Green]

Although FCP X can native import H.264, however, when you try to edit H.264 natively with FCP X, you will need to deal with the significant limitations of H.264 video:

1. H.264 is mathematically intense. It takes some serious computer horsepower to decode its compression.

2. Because it is so mathematically challenging, it takes longer to render H.264 files than other formats.

3. H.264, as shot by HDSLR cameras, is an 8-bit format, which means that you are potentially compromising your effects and, especially, color correction and compositing with gradients.

4. H.264 does not integrate easily with other video formats.

While Apple ProRes is less hardware intensive than H.264. You don’t need a fancy graphics card and you don’t need as fast a computer to edit these transcoded formats.