The Canon EOS-1D X is a 18.1 effective megapixels full-frame DSLR. The camera is capable of acquiring video at HD resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels) at frame rates of 24, 25 and 30 fps or 720p (1280×720) at 50 or 60 fps, and SDTV (640×480) at 25 or 30 fps. The h.264 video can be switched between all inter frame and IPB with bidirectional prediction to reduce file size. The EOS-1D X has two DIGIC 5+ image processors for sensor reading and compression, and a separate DIGIC 4 dedicated to automatic exposure. It was officially released on 20 June 2012. Like the Canon EOS 5D Mark III and Canon EOS-1D C, the camera features 61 autofocus points, which are assisted by a 100,000-pixel metering sensor.

All of these are great, till you find it is a problem importing the H.264 MOV footages to Final Cut Pro 6/7/X for editing. Even the raw video could be successfully loaded to FCP 6/7/X, the film will looks quite jumpy. H.264 is a delivery codec rather than editing code, and you need to transcode the video to a format more friendly for FCP 6/7/X, for instance, Apple ProRes 422 codec. The following passage guides you how to convert Canon EOS-1D X MOV footages to Apple ProRes 422 encoded MOV file for FCP 6/7/X.

Required software:
Canon EOS-1D X MOV Converter for Mac from UFUSoft

Step through:
Step one. Run Canon EOS-1D X MOV Converter for Mac. Click ‘Add’ button, browse to the footages and load Canon EOS-1D X MOV files to the converter.

Step two. Select the items to be converted, and click on ‘Convert to’ bar to set a FCP 6/7/X friendly format in Final Cut Pro template. There are Apple ProRes family, h.264 MP4, mpeg-4 mp4 codecs for your choice. Basically, “Apple ProRes 422 (*.mov)” is the best format for converting Canon EOS-1D X footage to FCP 6/7/X. If you prefer smaller file size, choose “Apple ProRes 422 (LT) (*.mov)” or HD Video > HD MOV Video (*.mov) instead.

Step three. Click the “Settings” button and set proper video/ audio parameters. My advice is to set the video size, bitrate and fame rate to be exactly as the footages so that you will suffer least quality degradation. For example, when the video is shot at 1920*1080, 5mbps, 30fps, you could set Size-1920*1080, Bitrate-original, Frame rate-30. If you would like to use default settings, simply skip this step.

Step four. Click the ‘Sent to’ button next to the Output File Name field and select a location on your HDD for the output video file.

Step five. Click the ‘Convert’ button to start Canon EOS-1D X MOV to FCP 6/7/X ProRes MOV conversion. After conversion you can click the “Open” button to locate converted Canon EOS-1D X MOV files for importing to FCP 6/7/X without rendering.

Small Tips:
* Preview the video- select it in file list and click ‘Preview’ button.
* Thumbnail- click ‘Snapshoot’ button when previewing the video. Click ‘Option’ to set the image format of screenshots.
* Crop/Cut/Effect- click ‘Editor’, you can freely clip videos, trim videos, adjust video effect, rotate.
* Combine files together- check the files to be merged in file list and check ‘Merge’.

To make the editing faster, you can convert the Canon EOS-1D X MOV files to Apple Prores 422, since it is less compressed. Note that trascoding will definitely degrade the video quality, this is inevitable. The quality loss is up to your settings when converting the footages.