Summary: We’ll study the post production challenges in dealing with Sony a7S 4K footage in Final Cut Pro 7 or FCP X. If you have issues editing Sony a7S XAVC S in FCP, get some tips and tricks from this article now.
Sony's newly announced a7S is a versatile camera that lets you internally record videos in 50Mbps XAVC S 1920x1080 at 60P. Plus, in XAVC S video mode, the a7S can output uncompressed QFHD 4K video (3840 x 2160) in 8-bit 4:2:2 to an optional external 3rd party 4k recorder via HDMI. While, there are a few issues when it comes to view, load and edit Sony a7S XAVC S in Final Cut Pro. Some tricks for Sony a7S to Final Cut Pro 7/X best workflow are listed below.
As we mentioned above, the a7S uses XAVC S recording format. At present XVAC-S, a long GOP inter-frame codec, does not appear to be supported by FCP X, although I do not know that from personal experience. Apple does not respond on these forums and no one here knows or can say when, if ever, XVAC-S will be natively supported by FCP X. To edit Sony a7S XAVC S footage in FCP X or FCP 7 smoothly, a suggestion is to use Brorsoft Video Converter for Mac to transcode "XAVC S" to "ProRes", which is a friendly format supported by FCP.
With it, you can effortlessly transcode Sony a7S XAVC S files to Apple ProRes - ensuring maximum editing quality and efficiency when working with Final Cut Pro (no matter Final Cut Pro X, FCP 6 or FCP 7). The conversion is darn easy to be finished with only three clicks without loss of video quality. Click the Download button below to get the program and check out the easy steps to convert and import Sony a7S XAVC S videos to Final Cut Pro without any troubles.
Transcode Sony a7S XAVC S to ProRes for editing in Final Cut Pro
Step 1. Install the program on Mac and run it. Drag the XAVC S files to the software. Or you can also click "Add" button on the top of the main interface to import video to the program. It supports batch conversion and joining multiple video clips into one file.
Step 2. Click the "Format" bar and select Final Cut Pro> Apple PreRes 422(*.mov) as output format. This format is specially designed for FCP, so that you can edit your original Sony a7S video in Final Cut Pro perfectly.
Tip: You also can click “Settings” to set video frame rate, video size and Video Bitrate as you want.
Step 3. Click the “Convert” icon under the preview window, and the Mac video converter will start converting a7S XAVC S to Prores MOV for FCP(X) on Mac.
After the conversion, launch Final Cut Pro, choose File > Import > Files…, and browse to where you save the converted XAVC S clips to. Now you can start fun away with editing Sony a7S video footage in Final Cut Pro X or FCP 7/6 without any problem.
Additional Tips:
This XAVC S to FCP Converter can also help you to encode XAVC video to iMovie, Adobe, FCE, Avid, etc. You just need to choose a proper video format like "iMovie and Final Cut Express -> Apple InterMediate Codec (AIC) (*.mov)" in the second step. For Avid Media Composer, choose "Avid Media Composer > Avid DNxHD(*.mov)" as output; For Adobe Premiere Pro, choose Adobe Premiere/Sony Vegas> MPEG-2(*.mpg) as output.
Related Guides:
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How to Import video files from Sony A5000/A6000 to iMovie
Sat Nov 15, 2014 9:04 am by miniavatar
