How to Make H.265 files Work in FCP X and FCP 7

This article focus on problems which occur when importing H.265 videos into FCP X and offers the best way to edit H.265 videos with FCP X smoothly.

Tips & Tutorials: Editing H.265 videos with FCP X

You would handle kinds of video files daily, including Samsung NX1, GoPro Hero 6, Panasonic GH5s 4K H.265, etc. And in order to get more wonderful videos, you probably will choose to edit these .mp4 files with FCP X, Premiere Pro, Avid or other Mac based applications on Mac OS X. While, there are dozen of H.265 files can’t be imported into the FCP X, for the complex video codec of MP4 files.

Q1: Problem importing H.265 into Final Cut Pro 7
“I’m having trouble importing H.265 I ripped off a Blu-ray my friend gave me of him playing lacrosse. I plan to make a highlight reel of him to send to colleges. Basically I guess I’m looking to figure out how to convert this H.265 file to something that will play nice with Final Cut Pro 7. Any help is much appreciated.”

Q2: Issues importing H.265 videos to FCP X
“I am trying to edit some lengthy gameplay I have previously recorded. I used GoPro Hero 6 to capture the video and then converted the videos to H.265 mp4. When using Premiere Pro CC everything works fine and importing the mp4 video to edit has no issues. But when I import the same mp4 file to FCP X the video is extremely chopping and a green frame pops into the picture on playbacks every few seconds. I am lost and any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.”

Well, you can’t edit a H.265 video directly in FCP including the lastest FCP X and problems may occur as above quoted words described. In fact, MP4 is a final delivery file type, and is heavily compressed. You need to change the file extentsion from “.mp4” to “a codec” that FCP can read more easily. The codec is Apple ProRes, which ensures maximum editing quality and efficiency when working with FCP (FCP X, FCP 7, FCP 6). To convert H.265 files to ProRes MOV, Acrok MP4 to FCP X Converter for Mac is an easy-to-use yet professional app to achieve your goal smoothly.

Overall, the H.265 Converter is clean and safe to install and use. And only with barely several mouse clicks, you can get the whole job done. Besides MP4, it can also transcode more video file formats like MTS, XAVC(S), MXF, M4V, MOV, WMV, AVI, MKV (H.265)to FCP most compatible Apple ProRes .mov without any quality loss. Now just download its free trail version and follow the below guide to convert H.265 videos to edit in FCP X or FCP 7 smoothly .

Free download H.265 to ProRes Converter Mac:

How to Convert MP4 and Import MP4 to FCP X or FCP 7

Step 1: Load MP4 files to the program

Launch the H.265 Video Converter and click “Add File” button to locate the .mp4 file(s) you want to add. Click “Setting” button then check the “Merge all files into one” box, you can join several .mp4 clips together if necessary.

Step 2: Select output format

When it comes to choosing the output format for these target videos, you directly one choose “Final Cut Pro” preset. For compression, Apple ProRes 422 MOV (*.mov) will do fine for keeping the original MP4 quality the same and creating a FCP friendly file format. Apple has made a few variations to the ProRes family – use ProRes 422(Proxy) or (LT) for smaller file sizes (Applied to FCP 7 and above version).

Step 3 (optional): Adjust the video, audio settings

Click “Settings” to fix the frame rate, bitrate, video size, etc to your needs. If you want to edit in FCP X or FCP 7 without having to render the clips while editing, all the frame sizes must be the same as the sequence settings. You can save a lot of render time by making all the clips the same size with this best HEVC/H.265 Video Converter.

Step4: Start H.265 to ProRes conversion on Mac

Click the blue “Convert” button at the bottom right corner to start transcoding H.265 to ProRes for FCP X and FCP 7.

When the conversion is done, you can find the output files by clicking “Open” button on the main interface, then you can import the converted H.265 files to your FCP X or FCP 7 to edit with ease. Once you’ve got your video edited, you can export to any codec/container that you’d like for playing and sharing.