Canon E1 Plugin Working in FCP X (sort of!)

I have not seen this posted anywhere, but after talking with 2 Canon reps today in the Cinema division, I can confirm that the "Import from Camera" function works with the latest version of EOS MOVIE Plugin-E1 for Final Cut Pro 1.3.... but only with 5D Mark III footage!.

After installing the MXF plugin for the C300, I was curious about what was going on with the E1 plugin for FCP X. After I was told that the plug-in indeed works with FCPX, I went to Canon site and checked their specs:

History
1. Models from which movies are supported (*1)
EOS-1D Mark IV (*2)
EOS 5D Mark II with new firmware (v2.0.3 or later) (*2)
EOS 5D Mark II with old firmware (v1.2.4 or earlier). Thumbnail (.THM) files are also necessary.
EOS 7D (*2)
EOS 60D
EOS 5D Mark III (*3)
EOS-1D X (*3)
*1: Standard-Definition movies are not supported. For details, please see the instruction manual.
*2: It is necessary to import both the movie files and the thumbnail (.THM) files at the same time to display the shooting information.
*3: The color matrix for the EOS 5D Mark III / EOS-1D X's full-HD / HD movies has been changed from BT.601 to BT.709.

2. Changes in v1.3
- Now supports EOS 5D Mark III and EOS-1D X.
- The following two items have been added to shooting information for movies prior to conversion that is displayed in the [Log and Transfer] window.
・Picture Style
・White Balance
Environment
The following software must be installed on the PC
- Final Cut Pro Ver6.0.6
- Final Cut Pro Ver7.0.3 and later

Supported Models:
- EOS 5D Mark II(Firmware Ver.1.x):1920x1080 / 30.0fps
- EOS 5D Mark II(Firmware Ver.2.x):1920x1080 / 29.97fps, 25fps, 23.976fps
- EOS-1D Mark IV, EOS 7D, EOS 60D, EOS-1D X, EOS 5D Mark III :
1920x1080 / 29.97fps, 25fps, 23.976fps
1280x720 / 59.94fps, 50fps

Supported OSes:
- Final Cut Pro Ver6.0.6 : Mac OS X 10.6.8(Mac OS X 10.7.x is not supported.)
- Final Cut Pro Ver7.0.3 : Mac OS X 10.6.8, Mac OS X 10.7.3 or later

CPU:
In addition to the support conditions of Final Cut Pro, must be an Intel CPU

RAM, Display:
Same as the support conditions of Final Cut Pro



Here's the weird thing: even though, the site only lists FCP 6.0.6 and FCP 7.0.3 (and later), it was confirmed to me that it also works on FCP X if you use either the 5DMk3 or the new 1DX. We both tested a 7D and 5D card and no dice. The 5D Mark 3 card has a different data structure that includes an EOSMISC folder inside the first DCIM folder. Inside that folder is a .CTG file, which is a catalog for the CF (or SD) card. There are no longer any .THM files and the metadata is included in the .mov file.

If you have a 5D3, you can mount your archived cards as a Camera and import all the meta data and partial selected clips like in Log and Transfer in FCP 7. The files are renamed from Canon's arcane file naming structure to a filename that is the Date/Time (similar to the C300 process).

Has anyone else managed to get this working? The Canon rep had no idea when this would be fixed for the 5DMark2, 7D etc. Just thought I'd pass this along....

The Canon people are a bunch of w****s. You can import directly into FCP from the camera card. There is no need to use any other software.

Tom: the point of the post was to alert FCP X users that Canon had made this available, at least to 5dMk3 owners. This is, as far as I can tell, an unpublished functionality.

Of course you can just pull the .mov files in directly, but the reason to use th e plug-in is two-fold:

1) Without the plug-in, you don't get important metadata including timecode and EXIF information.

2) the plug-in allows you to import sections of files instead of the entire file.

Log and Transfer had perhaps more usefulness in FCP 7, where tagging and file prep were harder to do than in FCP X, but it would be nice to see that ability to return to X for users of other Canon DSLRs. For C300 users, the ingest plugin is crucial to create rewrapped MXF files that can be read by FCP X.

I encourage Canon to complete the update of the plugin by making it functional for camera owners with 5d2, 7d and other ".THM" cameras

Agreed! I miss this plugin so much!
It gave you timecode, all kinds of metadata the ability to reimport etc.

How hard can it be?

Curious to try this with my .thm-free 60D. I'll report on Monday.

Seanus wrote: How hard can it be?

Well, that's a question I'd like to ask Canon...

It's always hit or miss with Canon and their updates. They can be maddeningly inconsistent. For example, the 7D, arguably a way more powerful and up-to-date camera than the 5d mark 2 does not get the Audio levels/Defeat AGC firmware fix that they gave the 5D and 60D. Why? No-one connected to Canon can explain it....

As far as not announcing E1 functionality for the 5D Mark 3, but having it anyway, I can only imagine that if they announced it as such, it would annoy 7D and Mark2 owners.

Hmm, I can't seem to get this to work- I have the E1 1.3 plugin installed, but FCP X just says "unsupported directory structure" when I point it to any level of the directory structure off the card (top, DCIM, EOS5D). What am I doing wrong?

The plugin is not for FCP X. You can import your material directly using the import function, not the camera import function.

Didn't the first poster in this thread say that they'd tested it and it worked even though it's not announced?

Hmm - Tom says that you can directly import from the compact flash card but my fcp X will see the file folder and files all greyed out (card from my XF100) and will not let me import it. I did install the 2.1 plugin but.. so far I cannot get my files into FCP x

Mac Lion

You don't go into the card. Import from camera. Open archive. Select the card. Nothing else. Click Open. It populates the camera import window.

Jim, for the XF you need the XF plugin. However, the mountain Lion version is still not out yet. You'll have to download the Lion version and go through the back door. Someone has posted how you trick your Mountain Lion into believing he's a Lion.

Specifically, it's the Installer that doesn't work under Mountain Lion. I am running ML on my Mac Pro, and all this works flawlessly. However, I already had the XF Plugin and XF Utility installed before I updated from Lion to ML. That's why everything works if you can just trick the Installer into thinking you're running ML.

Just throwing this out there for the fun of it.

If it is already QT files that the camera writes, such as the 7D, 5D, Rebel write, you use Import File, go to the folder inside the DCIM folder that has the H.264 and RAW and JPEG files in it. I do this daily with a 7D. If they are grayed out, that is an odd issue. See if the Finder recognizes the files on the card properly.

If it is not already a QT file that the camera writes, use Import From Camera, look at the card itself.

The XF100 shoots a Canon MXF format, not QT like the DSLRs.