Best Editing Workflow of iPhone MP4/MOV Video with FCP X

John Salley

Feb 23, 2017 05:38 pm / Posted by John Salley to Editor, Final Cut Studio

With iPhone’s amazing video camera, you can make great and high quality video. To turn your personal work into stunning work, it would be ideal for you to find a professional video editor software. For Mac users, Final Cut Pro X is made with your mind and will fit almost any need you have.

Edit iPhone video with FCP X

What video formats are recorded by iPhone?

Many currently available iPhone models including iPhone 7 Plus/7/6S Plus/6S/SE has the capability to record both 30fps 4K video and 30fps or 60fps 1080p HD video in either MP4 or MOV format compressed with H.264 video codec and AAC audio codec.

Workflow of iPhone MP4/MOV with FCP X?

From FCP X supported file formats, we can see that Final Cut Pro X has included native editing support for H.264 video with both MP4 or MOV container file format. What’s more, in can also handle 4K resolution video with no problem. What’s more, Final Cut Pro also has good ability to handle 4K resolution video. Then, you will have no problem to load both iPhone 4K or 1080p MP4 or MOV video into FCP X.

Best workflow of iPhone video with FCP X

However, it is well known that H.264 is an outstanding distribution format but not a good video editing format. If you try to edit H.264 natively in FCP X, you will start to lose image quality as you do color correction or composite gradients to create greenscreen keys. There just isn’t a lot of room to work.

To get the best editing workflow of iPhone H.264 video with FCP X, it would be much ideal for you to transcode H.264 to a a higher bit-rate format like FCP X’s high performance and high quality editing codec – Apple Prores, which render faster and have more room, so you can create great looking effects without losing any quality.

To generate Apple Prores codec from iPhone H.264 video, you can have a try at Pavtube iMedia Converter for Mac (review), which helps to directly encode iPhone 4K or 1080p H.264 to FCP X best favorable editing format Apple Prores in various different file types. You can choose proper Prores format to output according to the following standards:

Tips: If you computer is old or slow, or you just want to do some rough editing, you can select to output “Apple Prores Proxy)(*.mov)”or “Apple Prores (LT)(*.mov)”format to save more space and bandwidth. However, if your computer are powerful enough to handle multicam and high-resolution video and you are going to do many effects editing work with FCP X, you’d better choose to output “Apple Prores 422(*.mov)”or “Apple Prores 422(HQ)(*.mov)”for better performance.

Besides iPhone video, you can use also this powerful Mac media conversion tool to load Blu-ray, DVD, YouTube Video, Tivo or other incompatible file formats into FCP X for smooth post editing workflow.

How to Transcode iPhone H.264 Video to Apple Prores for FCP X Best Editing Workflow?

Step 1: Import iPhone H.264 files into the program.

You can directly drag and drop iPhone 4K or 1080p H.264 MP4 or MOV files to the program or click “File” > “Add Video/Audio” or “Add from Folder”.

Load iPhone 4K H.264 files

Step 2. Choose Apple Prores as the output format.

Click “Format” bar, from its drop-down list, select your desired Prores format such as “Final Cut Pro” > “Apple Prores 422(*.mov)”or “Apple Prores 422 (HQ)” is your Mac computer is powerful enough to handle 4K resolutions video.

Best prores format for powerful Mac computer

If your Mac computer not is powerful enough, it would be ideal for you to choose “Apple Prores 422(Proxy)” or “Apple Prores 422(LT)” format to create small resolution file size for good playback performance on slow computer.

Best Prores formats for slow Mac computer

Step 4: Start the conversion process.

After all the setting is over, go back to the main interface and hit right-bottom “Convert” button to start to convert iPhone 4K video to FCP X best editing formats.

When the conversion is completed, launch FCP X on your Mac computer to import converted video to FCP X for smooth editing workflow.

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