Will H.264 footage from my Ricoh GR work in FCP X?


Summary: If you are looking for the best workaround to makeRicoh GR H.264 videos work smoothly with FCP X, you will need to use third party converter software to transcode Ricoh GR H.264 footage to Apple ProRes 422. This guide tells you how to do it in detail.

Ricoh GR“Dear all, I’m a novice on video editing and planning to improve my home editing ability. I’ve got FCP X and was hoping to use Full HD 1080p h.264 video recording from my Ricoh GR. It will run, but makes the whole program move slowly. I don’t know enough about transcoding, so I’m wondering if it is possible to convert this type of footage to a file type that will run more smoothly in FCPX. I know how to render footage in the timeline, but what I want is for all of the footage, pre-editing, to run smoothly. Is there a way to achieve this? And, if the footage is just completely incompatible, what would be the best converter to use that would be guaranteed to work well? Thanks so much!”

As far as we know, the Ricoh GR camera is able to shoot Full HD video in widescreen 1920×1080 resolution with efficient, high quality h.264 compression at 30 frames per second. The H.264 is not a codec or format that is suitable for editing within FCP X or some other editing programs, like iMovie, Final Cut Express and FCP. To make Ricoh GR H.264 footage work smoothly with FCP X, you can try out Video Converter for Mac and convert Ricoh GR H.264 videos to Apple ProRes for FCP X.

Download a free trial of Video Converter for Mac
try Ricoh GR video converter for mac

How to transcode Ricoh GR H.264 footage to Apple ProRes for smooth editing with FCP X?

Follow these steps:
Step 1: Install and run Video Converter for Mac as the best Ricoh GR H.264 Video Converter for Mac. As soon as the main interface pops up, click ‘Add File’ button to load source video files.

Step 2: Select output format for FCP X
In order to convert Ricoh GR H.264 footage to Apple 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.

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 Ricoh GR H.264 shootings to ProRes 422
When ready, click ‘Convert’ button to convert Ricoh GR H.264 video files to Apple ProRes for editing with FCP X.

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

Step 5: Click ‘Open Folder’ button to get the generated ProRes QuickTime files
When the conversion is finished, simply click ‘Open Folder’ button to get the exported ProRes files for using in Final Cut Pro X with optimum performance.

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