General Discussion - Sony NEX-5R AVCHD MTS to Final Cut Pro 7/X azurehawk1 - Thu Sep 27, 2012 12:41 am Post subject: Sony NEX-5R AVCHD MTS to Final Cut Pro 7/X
Sony has announced a new mirrorless camera for days, the Alpha NEX-5R. This will be similar in design and specifications to the existing NEX-5N, however the 5R will get a few surprising upgrades. It features a newly-developed 16.1 effective megapixel Exmor APS HD CMOS sensor �C identical in size to sensors found in traditional DSLR cameras �C combined with a powerful BIONZ processor to assure richly detailed still images and crisp HD videos in all types of lighting conditions. It is a pity that, after testing, the NEX-5R can��t work well with Mac, especially Final Cut Pro X. The main reason is the Full 1080 60p HD AVCHD recordings are not surpported by FCP.
As we know, AVCHD (.mts, .m2ts, .m2t) itself is a high compression codec that few NLEs can edit it directly. And the footage in 1080 60p (50p for PAL) format is a unnormalized for all movie softwares. So copying Sony NEX-5R 60p recordings to FCP X is not an easy thing. Then how to make it easier so that we can smoothly edit 60p MTS/M2TS clips FCP X? It is said that the new version FCP X 10.0.5 can use Log and Transfer to import and transcode 60p MTS footages to a compatible format sometimes. But it is not the most concise way. The best way is to encode 60p AVCHD to the best format Apple ProRes 422 before importing to FCP X without L&T, which can save your rendering time. Below is the easy guide on how to change AVCHD to ProRes for FCP X. (Before the AVCHD to FCP X conversion, please make sure you have installed the Apple ProRes Codec manually before the conversion. )
Guide: Converting Sony NEX-5R 1080 50p/60p AVCHD to ProRes 422 for directly transferrring to FCP X
Step 1. Download and insatll a professional AVCHD Converter for FCP to help you convert AVCHD to ProRes on your Mac. Here I take the top AVCHD to PreRes Converter as an example. I have successfully used it to help me convert many 1080p AVCHD MTS/M2TS footages on Mac OS X and I am satisfied with the converted HD video quality. Run the convert tool and add MTS/M2TS files from Sony NEX-5R to it.
Step 2. Click ��Format�� bar, you will find the category ��Final Cur Pro��. In the sublist, five types of Apple PrsRes Codecs are all copatible for FCP X. If you want to the best video quality for editing in FCP X, you can choose ProRes 422 HQ MOV; Choose ProRes 422 LT MOV to get a smaller file. I choose the ProRes 422 MOV format, which has higher quality than Apple ProRes 422 (LT).
Step 3. Find the ��Profile Settings�� by clicking ��Settings�� button. you are will able to adjust video and audio parameters for your Sony MTS source files, including video size, bit rate, frame rate and more. In general, I set the Video size as 1920*1080 and frame rate as 30fps.
Step 4. Click the big button ��Convert�� to start transcode 1080p AVCHD to Apple ProRes for Final Cut Pro X on Mac OS X immediately.