Encoding XAVC to ProRes for Final Cut Pro X/7

Stuck in the issue: Final Cut Pro won’t ingest your XAVC files? This article will teach you how to edit Sony XAVC videos in Final Cut Pro 7/X without any trouble.

I followed instructions for using the new files XAVC files form my Sony PXW-X320. However, when I load the XAVC footage into Final Cut Pro source monitor, it only shows black screen. What’s the problem? Well, solution is never far behind. After searching further, I got some hints.

Although there are some plug-in for guys to import Sony’s XAVC to Apple’s Final Cut. Well, it can’t work well all the time and solve all the incompatible issues. As it happens with H.264, XAVC(as well as XAVC-S) is not for editing, is for delivery. In this case, Sony's XAVC in .mxf format is the previous step before edit/compose any sequence of pro video. To edit XAVC files in FCP, the ultimate solution is to transcode XAVC to ProRes. 

Overall, Brorsoft Video Converter for Mac,  is the recommended utility to fulfill the task. This video converter for Mac can be used as the best XAVC converter under Mac OS X(Sierra, El Capitan, Yosemite, Mavericks included). Applying it, you can easily transcode (4K) XAVC to ProRes 422, ProRes HQ, ProRes LT, ProRes 4444 for FCP 7, FCP X with least quality loss. In addition, it also allows you to encode/re-encode XAVC/XAVC S files to iMovie, Final Cut Express, Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer and various non-linear editing systems (NLE) for smoothly importing and editing.

Converting XAVC to ProRes for Editing in Final Cut Pro 7/X

Step 1: Import XAVC videos

Install and run the XAVC Video Converter on your Mac, then run it. Click on “Add”, and browse your files; select all the XAVC files you wanna convert. If you want to combine all the files together for easy importing to FCP, please tick the box “Merge into one” on the main interface.



Step 2: Click on Format, and from the dropdown menu, here I recommend Final Cut Pro > Apple ProRes 422 (*.mov) as the output format. Then you can set the output folder as you want.



Step 3: Adjust video, audio settings

Click the “Settings” button and customize proper video/audio parameters including Video size, bitrate and fame rate and mroe. Usually 1920*1080 video size and 30fps video frame rate are recommended for FCP editing. And if you got some original 4K XAVC files, you can keep the original 4K resolution as you want.

Step 4: Start XAVC to ProRes conversion

After all necessary settings, hit the convert button to start converting XAVC video to ProRes for FCP on Mac OS X.

Once the conversion process shows in 100%, click Open to get the output videos. Create a project and start editing Sony XAVC files in Final Cut Pro 7 or FCP X with light speed.

Related Guides:
How to Edit Sony XAVC to Premiere
How to Load Sony XAVC clips to iMovie
How to Import Sony XAVC videos to Avid
Sony PXW-FS7 Workflow within Adobe Premiere Pro

Sony PXW-Z150 XAVC footages to Final Cut Pro
 Sony PXW-FS7 XAVC footage to Avid Media Composer