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  1. Hi, I'm trying to take my camcorder's M2T files, which I have on my PC and edit them on the Mac in Final Cut Pro. I'm using the tool Pavtube MTS/M2TS Converter for Mac. Years ago I used Premiere quite a bit but have been out of the scene. I'm presuming my best option is to convert these M2T to an uncompressed format that FCP can open and work with. That said, I see this Pavtube tool offers a number of uncompressed raw video formats that the tool can convert to: BGR24, RGB555, YUY2, UYVY, and RGBA32. I am not familiar with these formats. Is there a standard option among them I can go with? (Or do you have an alternative suggestion?)

    Thanks,
    Jon
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  2. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    Where do I start...!?

    I will just cut to the chase and say you should skip all that and convert to ProRes 4:2:2.

    Btw, those might be elementary streams, and they might be uncompressed, but from a cam workflow point of view, those are NOT raw files. R3D, CinemaDNG - those are raw files.

    Scott
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  3. Thanks! Do you have a preferred program to do this?

    I see there is ProRes Converter (http://www.proresconverter.com/convert-m2t-to-apple-prores-for-fcp.html) and . . .

    ClipWrap (http://www.divergentmedia.com/clipwrap) out there.

    Thanks,
    Jon
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  4. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    Clipwrap is recommended by Apple, so that is a sure bet. The other is an unknown to me - could be good or bad.

    Scott
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  5. Hi, sorry to ask you another question but I appreciate your help and knowledge. I know it would be more time, but if I bring these in from the camcorder directly into iMovie (wasn't an option when this was done previously), I see they are saved as .MOV, significant in file size, with Apple Intermediate codec. Do you know if this would be a better pathway than taking the M2T files from the PC and using Clipwrap? Thanks!
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  6. clipwrap would be faster and better

    AIC is a lower quality version of ProRes (the ProRes HQ version would even be larger in filesize than AIC) . Both reduce the quailty and take longer to re-encode, although the loss from ProRes is negligible (you really need to zoom in and go frame by frame to see it)

    clipwrap just "rewraps" the file into a MOV container so it's faster , smaller filesize, with no quality loss. (But it also has the option to re-encode to ProRes as well)
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  7. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    You don't say which version of FCP you are working with. FCX can natively work with h.264 in most of its flavors, including AVC-Intra and AVCHD (and other MTS/M2TS files). So you wouldn't need to convert at all.
    I'm assuming you have an older version, otherwise, you probably wouldn't have even asked the question in the first place.

    So your options are:
    1. Clipwrap: remux ("re-wrap") into MOV container
    2. Clipwrap: re-encode to ProRes or AIC in MOV container (file sizes MUST get lots bigger)
    3. Upgrade (downgrade?) to FCPX and just load in the originals
    4. Use some other conversion tool (not recommended)

    The priority/weight of these choices depends on what is important to you: time/workflow, quality, filesize/storage, budget.

    Scott
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  8. And FCP 7 can convert AVCHD to prores with log & transfer

    And if you're on older hardware, it will be a smoother editing experience to convert to prores . Native AVCHD editing can be sluggish
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  9. Hi, thanks for all your input. The Mac I have is a 1 year old iMac so it's pretty fast. I actually do have the latest FCP but no matter what I did, it wouldn't recognize the M2T file types as a valid format it could open. Maybe I'm missing something . . . I'll go back and give it a shot again. Thanks again for your help.
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