[Kay Borden]

Thanks to Shane’s great Log & Transfer instruction video, I’m happy to report that downloading clips from the VIXIA HF M40 to Final Cut Pro 6 works great! Not directly but from an SD chip. I used a Lexar 16GB SDHC Platinum II chip. Remove it from the VIXIA HF M40, connect a UBS card reader so the Mac will recognize it and it shows up on the desktop. Transfer entire folder “PRIVATE” on the chip to your hard drive (these steps work just as well downloading directly from the chip without copying anything to your hard drive). In the “Perform tasks with the selected item” icon, top center of Log & Transfer panel, click “Preferences” and click on AVCHD and OK (there is no visual response from FCP of your selection). In the far left top corner “Add Folder” icon, select BDMV. The clips are in the STREAM folder inside BDMV, but you get an “unsupported” error message if you select STREAM instead of BDMV. The files show up in the transfer panel. Click on to select the file(s) you want converted to a format FCP can handle then click the “Add Selection to Queue” button. When the clips have finished converting, they automatically show up in your project browser window ready to work with.

At first, I thought this seemed like too many hoops to jump through but I like it, it’s a lot faster than transferring from tape with Log & Capture and the HD quality of the VIXIA HF M40 is superb.