Macsolvers' Blog

Final Cut 6 can’t connect to Canon Vixia camcorder

mackeydee
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From today’s mail bag:

The missing hardware blues reappear! This time with FCP 6.0.5 and the tiny Canon Vixia HF S 10, connected to an Intel MacPro workstation via USB.

A) Clicking the upper-left apple in the desktop (OSX 10.5.6) and choosing: “About this Mac / More Info / USB” — shows the camera.

B) Several FCP-related support articles say that the footage (in this case AVCHD format) will import into FCP via log and capture with some restrictions (and as ProRes or Apple Intermediate Codec). But my FCP does not find the camera, in the first place! I have tried ” View / refresh A/V devices” with no luck.

Meantime, I found that good old iMovie ’08 not only finds the camera, but offers to import the footage in a choice of “normal” or “hi-res” flavors. And the “hi res” choice yields a beautiful .MOV file in 1920×1080 Apple Intermediate Codec, which plays excellently in FCP!

Grateful as I am to the wise people that put this capability into iMovie, it would be lots better to have FCP do the same. Any ideas?

5 responses to “Final Cut 6 can’t connect to Canon Vixia camcorder”

  1. Dale Komai Avatar
    Dale Komai

    Instead of using Log and Capture, choose Log and Transfer from FCP’s File menu.

    Click here for screen image.

    Reply
  2. Sabreena Avatar
    Sabreena

    I saved the files from the camera onto my hard drive, and now when I try and import the files into Final cut, it doesn’t recognize them. Any suggestions how to do this?

    Reply
  3. Dale Komai Avatar
    Dale Komai

    Sabreena, What type of camera do you have and what version of Final Cut are you running? If you have an AVCHD camcorder like I do and own Final Cut Studio 2, you need to use the Log and Transfer menu to import and view your clips. Final Cut Pro can’t read AVCHD files directly from disk. Log and Transfer will allow you to transcode the raw video to a format (like ProRes) that Final Cut understands. iMovie is another program you can use to convert AVCHD files into a format that is compatible with Final Cut. I’ve been successful transcoding AVCHD clips using iMovie ’08.

    Reply
  4. boobuu Avatar
    boobuu

    The article is excellent.Thank. I just have to copy it 🙂

    Reply
  5. Becky Avatar
    Becky

    Thank you! I had the same problem. I’m going to try this.

    Reply

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