though canon says that the vixia hf200 records in 24fps, what it really does is record 24p in a 60i container. what does that mean? it means that you have to perform a reverse telecine to get rid of the unwanted frames and get true 24fps.

so if i wanted to use the 24fps mode on the camcorder, the Final Cut Pro workflow right now appears to look like this:

1) Final Cut Pro – Log and Transfer
This will convert the AVCHD encoded MTS files into ProRes 422 LT.

2) Compressor – Custom Profile for 1080i60->1080p24
This will perform the reverse telecine, pass through the audio, and give me a final file in ProRes 422 LT that is truly 24fps. Details on the Custom Profile are supplied by apple’s support page.

3) Final Cut Pro – Edit Video

what sucks about this is that there’s a lot of time spent converting the video into a workable format. because final cut pro doesn’t natively edit AVCHD (and even if it did, i’m not sure many computers can handle the workload effectively), converting to ProRes seems to make sense. but having to them run the video through Compressor really makes me unhappy and doubles my video import time.

i’m not really going to be editing video super long clips of video often, but still, this workflow makes shooting in 30fps kind of compelling. plus, youtube prefers their source videos in 30fps, anyway, so that might be it for me.