[Craig Seeman]

Perhaps you’re not on Yosemite (10.11.x)?

You can use the color board and follow their tutorials for that in the meantime.

I believe their specs are in the FAQ
https://www.colorgradingcentral.com/support/

What are the minimum system requirements?
Apple Mac (2011+)
OS X 10.10 “Yosemite” officially supported
OpenCL 1.2 support. For a list of OpenCL 1.2 cards click here.
Final Cut Pro X 10.1 or later
4 GB of RAM

[Craig Seeman]

I highly recommend Color Grading Cetnral’s FREE FCPX grading tutorials. Nearly an hour and half of free training should get you going.
https://www.colorgradingcentral.com/tutorials/

And if you want to move on to more advanced features such as using curves you may want to buy their Color Finale plugin.

[Craig Seeman]

There’s Toolfarm for commercial plugins although not FCPX specific.
https://www.toolfarm.com

They do have an FCPX category.
https://www.toolfarm.com/products/category/3502/all?template=tile&category=&variant=&rating=any&os=any&sort=default

[Craig Seeman]

[Larry Watts] “Many of the sites where I have found some of these products look similar and I wonder if it is the same program marketed under different names.”

They are usually using open source ffmpeg encoder rather than licensed encoders. The result could be compatibility issues. If you are a professional, avoid them.

With codecs like x264, it can be both open and licensed so the free Handbrake would be fine for that.
With H.264 there are various encoders such as MainConcept and Apple amongst others but they are comply with the official MPEG spec.

[Larry Watts] “I think FCPX uses compressor when it ingests media and transcodes.”

Although it might be more accurate to say they both are using AVFoundation CoreMedia. This is part of the OS basically.

[Larry Watts] “I may bite the bullet and get sorenson squeeze to be certain I’m giving my client the best possible product.”

I’m biased but I like Telestream Episode.

[Craig Seeman]

It’s a major time saver especially when one has to decide to hunt to see if something already exists or make the attempt to do it yourself. Reminds me of the days of Simon Kirby’s Lunchtime Pro site and Legacy. https://lunchtimepro.blogspot.com

[Craig Seeman]

Some NLEs can handle AVCHD directly. Current version of Adobe Premiere Pro CC and Final Cut Pro X should.

If you want to convert to ProRes Compressor will do that and Adobe Media Encoder should on Mac. Generally I’m not sure I’d trust Wondershare as they might be using ffmpeg for a “fake” form of ProRes.

[Craig Seeman]

[Larry Watts] “I don’t see a forum that deals with file conversion specifically. “

Perhaps you don’t know what compression is.

[Larry Watts] “All the software packages look silly.”

You’ve pretty much dead ended the conversation with that given that you’ve seen them all and they’re all silly.

[Craig Seeman]

What the different services do may actually change over time. There’s been some articles in a few trade publications on the changes Netflix is experimenting with. I don’t doubt Vimeo and YouTube (Google) make changes over time. YouTube has even had alternative codecs at times.

I don’t think bits per pixel is maintained over different frame sizes and data rates. Some tests have shown that isn’t linear anyway as some codecs become more efficient as data rate increases. I also wouldn’t doubt profile changes between Baseline, Main, High. The use of those I believe have changed over time as the need for Baseline has declined in all but the oldest devices.

A long while back I remember YouTube suggesting you upload the best possible master file as they may use it to re-encode your files in the future. They use have separate “content creator” specs but they’re uniform now.

In short, whatever one says the services are doing today, may not be true tomorrow.

[Craig Seeman]

Yes, XDCAM formats have multiple audio tracks even if the specific camera uses them.
FCPX has a “remove empty audio tracks” on import feature.

[Craig Seeman]

[Lina Vasiliunaite] “I have those footages compressed in H.264, because they have small sizes and easier to transfer to me.”
I would only ever use that for final delivery or upload to social media site like YouTube or Vimeo. It’s not something I’d ever do for editing.

[Lina Vasiliunaite] “How can I determine what color space of video?”

With rare exception, generally H.264 is 4:2:0 8 bit.
Personally I edit with camera original codecs or encode to ProRes.
ProRes 4444 can survive multiple generations.

[Lina Vasiliunaite] “Now I’m still not used to Premiere, probably I wouldn’t need to export anymore into video to import to AE.”

They should link to each other dynamically.