How can I import AVCHD?

[Mark Suszko]

I understand it takes more processor overhead to work with the mpeg4 files versus say a prores or dvcproHD file. If that doesn’t trouble you, I’d say go ahead. Your final render will possibly be slower. Me, I always bump my mpeg4 to prores before I work with it in FCPX.

[Noam Osband]

Would there be any difference in the quality of the exported film if I turn the MPEG4 to Pro Res? I imagine it’s the same both ways but maybe I’m wrong.

[Joe Marler]

There is no difference in image quality for FCPX editing. This is because the MPEG4 media files themselves are not re-written – IOW there is no “generational loss” since FCPX records all edits as metadata in a SQL database. For the final export that must be encoded in the preferred codec, but that would often be required even if you pre-converted the material to ProRes.

If you are working collaboratively with others in a post production pipeline and handing off files, in that case using ProRes can avoid generational loss. Or if you are doing “round trips” to other software, e.g, Resolve, then use ProRes for the same reason.