In my experience, I have found that transcoding the Canon Mark 5D 7D or the EOS Rebel T1i .H264 quicktime footage into an editable Final Cut Pro format, the best results have been to convert it to Apple ProRes, DVCPRO HD or Sony's XDCAM codec. I took 1080p 20 fps footage from the EOS Rebel TLi and transcoded it to XDCAM 1080 24p for a project and it turned out pretty good. Below are the results:




However, after working with the EOS Rebel TLi on a project, I decided to return it and invest in the Mark 5D or 7D. If you are going to do any serious video work with your DSLR, don't buy this particular camera, while the footage is good, you're better off with a larger chip sensor and better manual controls that the Canon Mark 5D and 7D provide.

To reiterate, my rule of thumb is to first try to convert it to the format you will be editing in, or in the format that your other source footage is in. If that doesn't work, and you still have jittery footage from your transcode, or it feels like it is stuttering, I would then try to transcode your DSLR footage to Apple Pro-Res. Your file sizes will be huge, but this should resolve many of the issues you are dealing with in the conversion process.

I would love to hear of your experiences pertaining to this topic. What has worked for you?