GoPro Hero 5 Black Workflow into FCPX

Hi,

I am a big fan of GoPro cams, but up until recently have been using iMovie for basic editing with my old Hero 4 Silver. I've recently upgraded to the new Hero 5 Black and also got the Hero 5 Session, with a view to taking video more seriously. I am also currently trialing FCPX as iMovie is getting too basic and I want to be more creative.

There is much talk about the best workflow and whether to use GP Studio to convert the native file format of GoPro cams before editing in FCPX. In an ideal world I want to dump all native GP files into FCPX and manage my workflow from there. I'm running a 2011 MacBook Pro, which has 16GB Ram and meets all other min requirements, but when trying to edit, I do get frame drop.

I am shooting my footage at 2.7k linear and either 25 or 50fps depending on what I am doing, along with a few Protune settings.

I haven't tried dropping the resolution yet to below 2.7k.

My videos will be watched on home HDTV and online.

Any advice welcome.

Thanks

james.lovell wrote: ...I've recently upgraded to the new Hero 5 Black and also got the Hero 5 Session....also currently trialing FCPX as iMovie is getting too basic and I want to be more creative...whether to use GP Studio to convert the native file format of GoPro cams before editing in FCPX. In an ideal world I want to dump all native GP files into FCPX and manage my workflow from there. I'm running a 2011 MacBook Pro, which has 16GB Ram and meets all other min requirements, but when trying to edit, I do get frame drop....I am shooting my footage at 2.7k linear and either 25 or 50fps depending on what I am doing,...

My documentary team has a dozen GoPros of various types, including two Hero 5 Blacks and two Hero 5 Sessions. I never use GP Studio, but just download the stills and video content straight from the cameras. In general GoPro content is highly compressed and can be a bit sluggish to edit, even using FCPX on a higher end Mac.

We rarely use 2.7k, but usually 1080 on the older cameras and 4k on the newer ones. For time lapse stills we use the max resolution.

A big advantage of FCPX is built-in seamless proxy mode. This allows an older Mac to provide good editing performance on difficult codecs or 4k content. However it does take time to produce these and space to hold them, very roughly an additional 80% of the H264 originals. Note you don't necessarily need "optimized media" but only proxy.

Proxy files can be generated on import or afterward by right-clicking on the clips and selecting "transcode", then pick only proxy. After they are generated, set the viewer (upper right drop-down menu) to proxy. When finished editing and before you export, set the viewer back to "optimized/original" otherwise the exported file will be at proxy resolution.

For time lapse stills, I formerly used Quicktime 7 Pro to convert the image sequence but this doesn't work on some newer cameras such as the 4000x3000 resolution stills from a Hero 5 Black. Therefore I now convert the stills to a full-resolution ProRes file using Compressor, which can then be imported into FCPX and edited. The technique is shown in MacBreak Studio episode 353: