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Transfer Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF5 1080i AVCHD Recordings to FCP on Mac OS


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    What are the photographers and videographers asking for on the market? They want DSLR image/video shooting quality in a easy-to-carry body, which will be great for shooting scenes and stories while travelling. Now, Panasonic get the point! Actually the Lumix DMC-GF5 Digital Camera with 14-42mm Lens Kit, which was introduced at Chessington World of Adventures, makes it! As the fourth in Panasonic's range of small-bodied 'GF' Micro Four Thirds cameras and the result of evolution of GF3, the GF5, with its high speed 14-42mm (equivalent to 28-84mm in 35mm format) lens, records still images and videos with DSLR-like quality in its compact and easy to use form. Only with this feature, the GF5 could be the temptation for you to change the compact camera, you are using now, even a Micro Four Thirds one, or replace your aging DSLR.


    Combining the strengths of newly developed 12.1 megapixel Live MOS sensor, featuring high sensitivity signal processing and the Lumix Venus Engine image processor, the Lumix DMC-GF5 always outputs amazing image and video quality at high speed. The high-grade lens and precision AF ensures the high-quality images with real-to-life details. Besides, Panasonic makes the video shooting more easier to access. At the touch of a record button can you instantly begin a video even while shooting photos. The videos are recorded in the AVCHD format which excels for both compression efficiency and playback compatibility, which is also the souce of the incompatibility problem for Final Cut Pro uers when they intend to edit Panasonic Lumix GF5 AVCHD recordings in FCP, including FCP 6/7 and FCP X (10.0.3).


    The problem lies in that FCP can not natively support the AVCHD files. In order to solve the problem, FCP introduced Log and Transfer, a very useful tool for putting AVCHD footages to FCP, but it still has some limitations, especially when you have copied GF 5 MTS shootages to Mac and saved them as .m2ts files. How can we transfer Lumix DMC-GF5 MTS/M2TS recordings to Final Cut Pro with original quality? As you know more about L&T, you will get the clue. It acts as a conveting tool on the background to complete the AVCHD to ProRes, FCP compatible video format, before ingesting AVCHD files to FCP. So if the L&T is not enough, what you need is a powerful AVCHD to ProRes Converter, which supports MTS/M2TS to ProRes conversion.


    Among all the converters you can find after Google, the highly recommended one is Mac AVCHD to FCP Converter. It can not only convert Lumix DMC-GF5 AVCHD to ProRes on Mac OS with origianl quality, but also deinterlace 1080i recordings and make them more smooth in FCP. In addition, the versatile MTS to FCP Converter is capable of merging several videos into one file, deinterlacing the original footages, cropping video size, trimming video clips, adding special effects and text/image/video watermarks to output videos. It is no doubt that the MTS/M2TS Converter for Mac is rated as the best one.


    Tricks, tips and steps on how to get the FCP compatible videos with HD quality after the MTS/M2TS to ProRes conversion on Mac OS.


    Step 1: Load Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF5 1080i AVCHD files to the best AVCHD to FCP Converter on Mac OS.
    Connect Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF5 to Mac. Luanch the MTS/M2TS to FCP Converter for Mac and click the Add button to import the 1080i AVCHD footages to it. If you have put your recordings to HDD, you can directly drag the .m2ts files to the M2TS to FCP Converter for Mac. After that, you should double click files to see whether they can be previewed normally.


    Tips:
    1. If you want to combines several AVCHD clips as one, please tick "Merge into one" box to merge the files into one single file.
    2. Go to Video Editor by clicking Edit and you can tick Deinterlacing to make your videos deinterlaced.


    Step 2: Select the Final Cut Pro compatible video format and customize settings as you need.
    Click on the "Format" and move you pointer to "Final Cut Pro" on the dropdown menu. Under the submenu are there a few formats, alll of which are compatible with FCP. Here we recommend the Apple PreRes 422(HQ) if you give the priority to the quality of the converted videos. If you need to change the default settings, you should go to the "Profile Settings" by clicking the Setting button. On that interface, you can customize the bit rate, frame rate, sample rate and audio channel according to your needs and optimize the output file quality.


    Notes:
    1. If you want the files to be in smaller size and make sure that your FCP has updated to 7.0.3 version or above, you can follow Final Cut Pro>Apple ProRes 422(*mov) option. If your files size is at SD levels, you are advised to choose Final Cut Pro>Apple ProRes 422(Proxy)(*mov), which is recommended for 480i/p and 576i/p shootings as well.
    2. 30fps for 60i(NTSC) mode users and 25fps for 50i(PAL) modes users, and 1920*1080 are recommended parameters to keep the best quality for editing in Final Cut Pro. If you want to have a smaller file size but keep the good quality, you can change the video size to 1440*1080.

    Step 3: "Convert" Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF5 1080i AVCHD recordings to ProRes 422 for FCP on Mac OS.
    Click the button for converting and the AVCHD Converter for Mac will start transcoding Lumix DMC-GF5 1080i MTS/M2TS files to FCP for editing on Mac OS.


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