How to Edit Sony PMW-F55 CineAlta XAVC Movies in FCP/iMovie

November 19, 2013 6:31 pm / Posted by Taylor Scorpio to Cameras/Camcorders

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The Sony PMW-F55 is a next-generation CineAlta 4K digital cinema camera, featuring high-data-rate on-board recording of XAVC 4K and 180 fps XAVC 2K/HD with a free planned upgrade. With its revolutionary electronic global shutter and outstanding professional features, it is successfully sold on the global market, expected to reach more than 2,000 units’ shipment worldwide by the end of April 2013.

However, the XAVC format is not yet widely adopted in the marketplace, so when you are planning to conduct post production to the PMW-F55 XAVC footages with your editors, you may encounter with the problem like "the file cannot be imported/opened". Of course, if you are running the Final Cut Pro X, you can just update your Final Cut Pro to the latest version, and then visit Sony’s site to download their latest import plugin "PDZK-LT2 vs1.10." But if you are running the older version of FCP like FCP 7, or iMovie (iMovie’11, iMovie’09, etc.) you cannot import the Sony PMW-F55 XAVC footages to them. This article is written to show you how to import Sony PMW-F55 XAVC to Final Cut Pro/iMovie to edit with the help of Doremisoft XAVC Video Converter for Mac

How to Edit PMW-F55 Footage in FCP/iMovie

If you want to import Sony PMW-F55 XAVC to iMovie (iMovie’11, iMovie’09, etc) or FCP 7, first you need to convert XAVC to ProRes 422 MOV file format. To do so, please download Doremisoft Mac XAVC Video Converter After that, follow the guide below to convert Sony PMW-F55 XAVC to Final Cut Pro/iMovie step by step:

After download the XAVC footages from the F55, double click to open Doremisoft Mac XAVC to FCP/iMovie Converter, and then drag and drop the footages on the main interface of the program with ease. Multitasking is allowed.

The Mac XAVC Converter offers various optimized presets for users. To convert PMW-F55 XAVC to iMovie/FCP, directly hit the "Convert to" menu bar, then point at the "Final Cut Pro" or "iMovie" tab to choose the ProRes 422 MOV as the output format.

Last but not least, press the big blue "START" button on the bottom right to launch the conversion from Sony PMW-F55 XAVC to Final Cut Pro/iMovie-friendly ProRes 422 MOV file format. Due to the size of the XAVC footages and the performance of your Mac, the conversion may last for a while.