Did you jump right in and download Final Cut Pro X today? Did you get your mind readjusted to the new editing paradigm? Did you freak out when you couldn’t get your XDCAM footage into FCPX? And then have another little freak out about what you had done when you saw the unrelenting tweet stream?!
Relax. Keep in mind this is a total reboot of Final Cut Pro and you can still keep on using Final Cut Pro 7 side-by-side. Use the new one when you have free time or shorter projects, but rely on FCP 7 for your big jobs for now.
But back to our little dilemma… you read that FCPX supports native DSLR footage and XDCAM footage and this and that, but how the heck do you import your EX1 or EX3 clips into the project?! There is no apparent way to do so as importing the native files just produces a solid green clip (hardly useful, even for environmental projects) and there is no Log & Transfer anymore!
Here is the fix: There is no “native” XDCAM EX support (unlike native DSLR support) in the new FCPX — you still have to use Sony software to “wrap” your XDCAM files into a Quicktime file and then import your clips from there. And the new XDCAM Browser won’t do the trick, nor will the Clip Browser, no, you have to use something you may not have used before: XDCAM Transfer. If you think of XDCAM Transfer as your new Log & Transfer window, I guess it is about the same, it just feels wrong to have an “evolutionary” new video editor and need to switch out to an older third-party application for a codec that has been around for so long now.
