Canon VIXIA AVCHD to FCP (X), Avid, Premiere Pro, Sony Vegas


Summary: If you are looking for the best workaround to import Canon VIXIA AVCHD footage to FCP (X), Avid, Premiere Pro, and Sony Vegas for post production, you may find what you need in this post. It explains how to transcode Canon VIXIA video shootings to a format that is best suited for your NLEs in detail.
canon vixia
Canon’s VIXIA camcorders include VIXIA HF G30, VIXIA HF G20, VIXIA HF R42, VIXIA HF R40, VIXIA HF R400 and the new announced VIXIA HF R52, VIXIA HF R50, and VIXIA HF R500. Most of them are capable of recording 1080/60p shootings in easy-to-share MP4 (35 Mbps) and AVCHD Progressive (28 Mbps) formats. Due to format issues, people often have troubles while importing Canon VIXIA AVCHD footage to FCP (X,) Avid, Premiere Pro, and Sony Vegas to do further editing. If that’s the case, you are suggested to transcode VIXIA AVCHD to a format that is well compatible with your NLE apps. For instance, you can convert VIXIA AVCHD to ProRes for using within Final Cut Pro, encode VIXIA footage to DNxHD for Avid MC, transcode VIXIA AVCHD to MPEG for Premiere Pro and rewrap VIXIA MTS to MPEG for Sony Vegas. To perform format conversion, third party software is required. If you concerns are ease of use and best fitted editing codec for your NLEs, we would recommend Video Converter, which comes in both Windows and Mac version and features great ability to work as a Canon VIXIA AVCHD Converter.

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How to transcode Canon VIXIA footage to FCP (X), Avid, Premiere Pro, and Sony Vegas?

Follow these steps:
Step 1: Install and run Video Converter as the best Canon VIXIA AVCHD Converter. As soon as the main interface pops up, click ‘Add File’ button to load Canon VIXIA AVCHD video files.

Step 2: Select output format for FCP, Avid, Premiere Pro, or Sony Vegas
In order to transcode Canon VIXIA AVCHD files to ProRes for FCP X or the former version FCP 6 and 7, from the Format bar, navigate to ‘Final Cut Pro’ catalogue, and select ‘Apple ProRes 422 (*.mov)’ as target format. Apple ProRes is the best suited editing codec for FCP X and FCP 6/7, so when loading them into FCP, you needn’t wait for a long time for the rendering process.

To be able to edit Canon VIXIA AVCHD footage in Avid, from the Format bar, navigate to ‘Avid Media Composer’ column, and select ‘Avid DNxHD (*.mov)’ as target format.

For the purpose of encoding VIXIA MTS clips for editing in Premiere Pro and Sony Vegas, from the Format bar, move to ‘Adobe Premiere/Sony Vegas’ column and choose ‘MPEG-2 (*.mpg)’ as output format.

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 (for advanced users)
Click ‘Settings’ button, the ‘Profile Settings’ window pops up, on which you are allowed to custom video and audio parameters like bit rate, frame rate, resolution, sample rate, and audio channels.

Step 4: Start transcoding Canon VIXIA MTS shootings
When ready, click ‘Convert’ button to convert Canon VIXIA AVCHD files to Apple ProRes for editing with FCP (X), to DNxHD for using in Avid, and to MPEG for working with Premiere Pro and Sony Vegas.

Tips: if you don’t want to wait around in front of your computer for the converting process, you can tick off ‘Showdown computer when conversion completed’ and go away to do other things.

Step 5: Click ‘Open Folder’ button to get the generated files
When the conversion is finished, simply click ‘Open Folder’ button to get the exported files for using in Final Cut Pro (X), Avid MC, Premiere Pro and Sony Vegas with optimum performance.

Also read
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Transfer AVCHD footage to Mac and edit MTS clips within FCP 7
How to open and edit Canon XA10 AVCHD mts in Final Cut Pro?