After Canon PR jumped the gun a bit on the release of the EOS Movie Plugin-E1 for Final Cut Pro, they have finally released the tool here in the back half of March. If you haven’t heard about the EOS Movie Plugin-E1 for Final Cut Pro it adds an option to the FCP Log and Transfer tool to import Canon 1D, 5D Mark II and 7D H.264 QuickTime files and transcode to any of the ProRes flavors (or Apple Intermediate Codec) in the process. A timecode is assigned to the footage based on the time stamp set in your camera and a reel names is also assigned. There’s also an option to archive the footage when loading directly off a CF card. There’s a very detailed webpage about the EOS Movie Plugin-E1 for Final Cut Pro available here. To download the installer follow this link and then select Mac OS X from the Drivers / Software Selection pop-up:

More observations and information after the jump.

I’ve been kicking the tires on this thing since its release on Friday and have written up a couple of observations on the Editblog. Folks working with this tool over the last couple of days have noticed a couple of interesting things. You can’t just load a folder full of Canon H.264 QuickTimes that you have backed up to a folder as you need to have a somewhat proper directory structure that Canon writes to the original card.

The above image is a default directory structure off of my 7D.  You can make variation on this and Log and Transfer will still be able to find the footage. I changed the above names to this:

Log and Transfer was still able to load the footage and assigned a reel name based on the top directory:

This is nice as it can greatly help with organization on a large (or small since you should always be organized) shoot. What you apparently can’t do is remove the .THM thumb files from the folder that contains the movies and still images as then Log and Transfer won’t be able to load the Quicktimes:

Interestingly, if you were to remove the .THM files while you had the movies loaded into the Log and Transfer tool the QuickTimes will remain loaded but their thumbnail image will go away:

I can’t really think of why you would ever want do this. I think my takeaway lesson is to rename the EOS_DIGITAL folder to something more descriptive from a reel name standpoint and then carry on.

Another hack that has come along since Friday is a way to get the EOS Movie Plugin-E1 for Final Cut Pro to support the new Canon 550D T2i camera, which shoots the same types of QuickTime movies that the bigger Canons shoot. The supported cameras list is a modification to the plist file that the tool uses. For some reason the 550D isn’t included. Final Cut User has written a post that details how to hack the plist to add 550D support.

YouTube user chrisfenwick has also post a five-minute YouTube demo of the EOS Movie Plugin-E1 for Final Cut Pro: