Make Canon C300/C500 MXF videos supported by FCP
 

If you have a Canon EOS C300 or C500 professional camcorder and attempt to bring the recorded file into Final Cut Pro 6 or FCP 7 for editing, you may meet some troubles, for example, the Log and Transfer window may tell you "The files are unsupported". Why? Did Apple not say that L&T can import and transcode MXF recordings? Indeed, we can successfully transfer Canon C300 MXF footages to FCP 6/7 with L&T sometimes. But has some conditions about system, codec, settings, plugin, ect.

I also tried to import my C300 clips to FCP 7 with L&T and I met the same "The files are unsupported" message in L&G window. I searched many information to look for the reason and solve the importing problem, but I failed. Mnay users said that it was likely to be the system. So I have to start to look for a third party converter to convert MXF. From Googling, I found people gave Brorsoft a good review. It is the best MXF to FCP Converter I have tried out in the past few months. Very simple, no headaches, no worries, no plugins and no need for any unnecessary steps. The most important is that the covnerted quality is perfect for viewing and editing. I am very happy to find it. Bellow are the simple steps on converting Canon C300/C500 MXF clip to ProRes on Mac OS X.

http://macmxfconverter.com/images/mx...conversion.gif

Step 1. Download and install the MXF Converter on your Mac(it has the free trial version). Open the software and click "file" to add C300/C500 clip or clips to it.

Step 2. Click "format" and find the "Final Cut Pro" category, you will see many video formats in it, choose the best one as the output format. Please remember that FCP's native format is ProRes MOV.

Tricks:
1) To get a high HD quality, please select "ProRes 422 (HQ)(*.mov)";
2) If you choose "ProRes 422 (LT)(*.mov)", you can get a smaller file size;
3) "ProRes 422(*.mov)" is the best format for playing.
4) FCP 6 only surpports ProRes 422 (HQ) and ProRes 422

Step 3. Best settings for ProRes 422

http://macmxfconverter.com/images/fcp-profile-mac.gif

Step 4. Click the button in the low right corner, the app will start to reformat Canon MXF to ProRes 422. Click "Open" to get the converted video file to when the conversion ends.

Tip: I found the great MXF Converter for FCP also can deinterlace 1080i MXF files via checking off the “Deinterlacing” box in the Video Editor before the conversion.