Work with Pentax K-S2 movies in iMovie, FCPX, Avid


This post displays an easy and direct way to work with Pentax K-S2 H.264 movies in iMovie, FCP X and Avid. If you are having issue editing Pentax K-S2 H.264 video in iMovie, FCPX or Avid, you may wish to read this post.
work with Pentax K-S2 H.264 movies in iMovie, FCP X and Avid
Ricoh has announced the Pentax K-S2 DSLR, the world’s smallest dustproof, weather-resistant digital SLR camera, offering a 20MP APS-C sensor, fully articulated LCD, weather-resistant construction and Wi-Fi with NFC – a first in the Pentax K-series. Equipped with a built-in stereo microphone, the K-S2 captures beautiful Full HD 1920 x 1080 movie clips at 30/25/24 frame rate in the H.264 recording format, along with natural, lively stereo sound. It also assures flawless, high-quality movies even with fast-moving subjects, and even provides advanced movie functions, such as a 4K Interval Movie mode that connects still images recorded at a certain interval to create a single movie file, and a Star Stream mode to fade in and out the traces of stars to recorded movies.

So you just have recorded some video files with a new Pentax K-S2 and couldn’t figure out a smooth way to edit the Pentax K-S2 footage through iMovie, FCP X or Avid system? Convert them first. For a fast and fluid workflow, we would recommend transcoding Pentax K-S2 H.264 video to a “edit” friendly format for use in your editing packages. For instance, convert Pentax K-S2 H.264 files to AIC for iMovie, transcode Pentax K-S2 H.264 footage to ProRes for FCP X and encode Pentax K-S2 H.264 recordings to DNxHD for Avid apps. Read on to find a step-by-step guide talking about how to rewrap Pentax K-S2 H.264 files for editing in iMovie, FCP X and Avid with optimum performance.

[Guide] How to transcode Pentax K-S2 movies for editing in iMovie, FCP X and Avid?

Software requirement
HD Video Converter
transcoding Pentax K-S2 H.264 video to a “edit” friendly formattranscoding Pentax K-S2 H.264 video to a “edit” friendly format

Follow these steps:
Step 1: Open up HD Video Converter as a Pentax K-S2 Video Converter. When its main interface comes up, click ‘Add File’ to load your source media.
Pentax K-S2 video converter

Step 2: Select output format for your editing program
To convert Pentax K-S2 H.264 video to AIC MOV for iMovie, from ‘Profile’ list, choose ‘Apple InterMediate Codec (AIC)(*.mov)’ as output format under ‘iMovie and Final Cut Express’ column. This output is also suitable for use in the discontinued Final Cut Express.
convert Pentax K-S2 H.264 files to AIC for iMovie
Note that the AIC codec is also accepted by Final Cut Pro (HD 4.5 through 5), but rarely used in Final Cut Pro as of Version 6 since it now uses the ProRes codecs instead of the Apple Intermediate Codec.

To transcode Pentax K-S2 H.264 video to ProRes MOV for FCP X, you need to select ‘Apple ProRes 422 (*.mov)’ as output format under ‘Final Cut Pro’ column. The ProRes codec is suitable for editing in FCP X and its former version FCP 6 and FCP 7.
transcode Pentax K-S2 H.264 footage to ProRes for FCP X

To rewrap Pentax K-S2 H.264 video to Avid for editing, from ‘Profile’ list, select ‘Avid DNxHD (*.mov)’ as output format under ‘Avid Media Composer’ column.
encode Pentax K-S2 H.264 recordings to DNxHD for Avid
Important: If you’ve loaded a number of video clips to do batch conversion, please do remember ticking off ‘Apply to All’ option before you start.

Step 3: Custom video and audio settings (optional)
If necessary, you can click ‘Settings’ button and go to ‘Profiles Settings’ panel to modify video and audio settings like video encoder, resolution, video bit rate, frame rate, aspect ratio, audio encoder, sample rate, audio bit rate, and audio channels. 3D settings are also available.

Step 4: Begin Pentax K-S2 H.264 video files Conversion
When ready, click ‘Convert’ to start format conversion. Once the conversion process is complete, you can click ‘Open Folder’ button to get the generated AIC MOV files, ProRes MOV files or DNxHD MOV files for editing in iMovie, Final Cut Express, FCP 7/6/X or Avid with optimum performance.

Tips:
If you don’t want to wait for the entire conversion process, you can tick off ‘Showdown computer when conversion completed’ and go away to do other things.

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