Real world review of 7 to X – transfer FCP 7 projects to FCPX

Transfer FCP 7 projects to FCP X

Review of 7 to X from Intelligent Assistance

Along with last week’s major upgrade to FCP X from Apple was an announcement of the release of the, “just as important” ability to transfer legacy footage from FCP 7 to FCP X.

Intelligent Assistance say this about their new application:

“7toX for Final Cut Pro brings your Final Cut Pro 7 projects forward to Final Cut Pro X so you can use Apple’s powerful new professional editing tools to update or finish your older projects. The lightweight application is simple to use, with drag-and-drop support and progress information. 7toX translates important metadata from your Final Cut Pro 7 Project — including bins, clips and sequences — to a new Event in Final Cut Pro X (version 10.0.3) with the highest fidelity of any translation application for Final Cut Pro. In addition, the application provides clear, detailed reporting after every transfer.”

We recommend Final Cut Library Manager as a Must have Application:

FC Library manager 2

 

But how does it perform in the real world. I had an indepth look at the application today and here are the results:

The process is simple and happens without fuss.

1:- In FCP 7 choose the File menu and from the Export submenu, select XML… Name and save the XML file. (make sure all clips are on line)

2:-  When you launch 7 to X, an open dialog appears allowing you to locate your exported XML file.

You see a progress bar during translation and, when completed, you have a choice of opening FCP X directly or saving as a FCP X  XML file. I suggest you save as a file as It has crashed on me several times when opening directly in FCP X .

3:- Open FCP X and from file menu select Import> XML file.

In this real world test I used a FCP 7 project that contained:

12 x sequences

33 x tape based clips 1080/50i

326 Card clips that had been transcoded by FCP 7 as ProRes 422

How long did it take?

7 to X took a total of 8 x minutes to translate from the XML file created by FCP 7 ( FCP 7 took 1 x minute to create)

7 to x created a 1.8 Mb xml file

What resulted?

The result was the creation of  a new event, in FCP X, with all the FCP 7 project contained in it including a keyword collection of the 12 sequences from FCP 7.

The resulting timeline is below:

Now how accurate is it?

I did not expect that it would be seamless but there are some major drawbacks (I’ll look at some of those further on). But with that said the project come over completely including all the audio files and original clips.

These are some of the items that did not translate well.

Unknown transitions needed to be redone but dissolves/fades were fine. Manual fades are recognised

It does not like mixed overlapping formats of footage so that they show as multiple layered clips in the FCP X’s viewer.

View of the time line in FCP X

The frame above, as shown in the viewer – different formats are retained.

.

Gaussian Blurs come across at 50 % so need to be lowered back to FCP 7 levels.

Gaussian Blur as converted

Gaussian Blur reset to FCP 7 level

.

Filters and effects that are not recognised are marked in the FCP X time line with red markers and notes are added.

.

Overall impressions.

I am most impressed and will use the application extensively – what a bargain for $10.00

 

We recommend Final Cut Library Manager as a Must have Application:

FC Library manager 2

 

Tutorials: Final Cut Pro X from $1.99

47 individual lessons over 8 hours of tutorials,
Separate Basic and Advanced sections.

VEO shop

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