Problems w/ the new Canon EOS FCP Movie Plugin

parallactic-pictures

parallactic-pictures

Active member
Howdy all,

I'm a little late on the bandwagon with this new EOS Movie Plugin for Canon. So I'm sure this has been discussed already, though I did a little searching and didn't see any definitive thread about it.

Over Easter break, I was home in NY and my co-director and I shot some horror mockumentary footage out in Long Island, using my Canon 7D. It is my goal with this footage, to do some light editing and get better with Final Cut Pro 7. I have the program now, but my FCP chops are very rusty.

To import the footage, I wanted to use the new EOS Plugin from Canon, which would easily import and then convert my H.264 MOV files into Apple ProRes 4222 LT. Problem is, I already moved all the raw media from my cards onto an external HD. I then went and deleted all the THM files (thumbmails). This is standard for me, but it now seems like I might have f*cked myself, because when I try and log/transfer the files from that folder, I get this message from FCP:

Warning: "Raw" (my folder name) contains unsupported media or has an invalid directory structure. Please choose a folder whose directory structure matches supported media.

I can only assume that either:

1) The Plugin is not smart enough to pull raw media from a folder drive. (it needs to pull it raw from the actual SF card)
or
2) When I deleted those THM files, it screwed up the directory, and now the Plugin won't recognize it as "supported".

Any ideas?
 
Hi DJ,

Is there an easier way to do this? For one, I don't have any other raw media on cards. It's all been copied over to HDs already and the THMs have been stripped out. Not to mention, with this new project, I have about 30 gigs worth of footage, and a of tiles. So creating a bunch of fake thumbnails and then naming them all to align with each clip, is just going to be a tedious nightmare.

Will this new EOS Plugin only work if the file directory is completely intact with how it was on the SF cards? I can't believe it would be that obtuse of a plugin.
 
I appreciate this thorough write-up you did, but you're speaking a language I'm pretty unfamiliar with. I don't know what a #bash is or a cmod. Also, my MOV files for this project are on an external harddrive.

I thought this would be much easier, but now I'm seeing that working with the Plugin is probably more a headache than it's worth. So I guess I'll put on my work gloves and just go deal with Compressor (which will probably crap out and fail on me at least a dozen times before it successfully converts the files).
 
To solve this one, I'd just download MPEG Streamclip and use it to convert your H.264 .MOV files to ProRes LT. It's the way we all did it before the Canon plugin was released recently. It's simple and pretty fast.

Lesson learned: Next time, copy the entire contents from your flash card to your HD. Create a folder within your normal project folder (however you setup your project folders or source video folders) called EOS_DIGITAL. Paste your CF contents within it. Then within FCP, log and transfer from the folder above EOS_DIGITAL. Yer all set.
 
BTW, when I first started using the EOS plugin, I received the same error as you even though I didn't delete any thumbnails. I simply didn't use the same folder structure as the CF card (EOS_DIGITAL > DCIM > 100EOS5D; also with empty MISC folder at same level as DCIM).

As soon as I recreated the same folder structure on my HD, I had no issues with log and transfer.
 
Ok, thanks for the advice. I'm actually converting all the files in MPEG Streamclip now to 422 LT. 422LT for me actually makes the new converted files a little larger than the actual native H.264 files. But I think that's to be expected. After all, it's not so much about the size of the file, but how well it plays on my FCP timeline. Though I tested s few of my larger H.264 native files in FCP and they played fine. Oh well, better safe than sorry.

Yeah, now I know. For future projects, I won't touch that folder structure.

Thanks, all.
 
Get a Card Reader!

Get a Card Reader!

Had the same nonsense problems with FCP7 in a Quad iMac - neither computer nor FCP would recognize my 7D, though Adobe Bridge could see it and download still and video files.

Simple answer was to buy a RocketFish high speed reader at BestBuy ($35, takes both CF and SDHC cards) and bingo - instant Log and Transfer with FCP (using the EOS L&T plugin) . Select which ProRes you want to convert to and off you go!
 
Last edited:
You can drag all the movie files into your FCP project and use media manager under the file menu to recompress them. In future, you drag the DCIM folder from your CF card to your hard drive and then the E1 plugin will recognize and log and transfer from your hard drive into your FCP project. Unfortunately, once you have separated the files from their original place in the DCIM folder E1 won't work with them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top