FCP X Tip: Premiere Pro to Final Cut Pro X

I was recently approached about cutting a project that had been assembled in Adobe Premiere Pro. And while I have nothing inherently against Premiere, I must prefer to work in, and am much faster and more familiar with Final Cut Pro X.

But since I didn't want to waste time re-creating the work that was already done in Premiere I decided to look around to see if there was a quick solution for taking a Premiere Pro project and converting it into a workable Final Cut Pro X project.

Sure enough there was.

Let me start by saying the solution isn't free, as it requires you to purchase a third-party application, but thankfully the application's price is only $10 and will be well worth your effort.

The first step is to open up your Premiere Pro project. When you're satisfied that it's ready to migrate simply go to the File menu and select Export > Final Cut Pro XML. Save this XML file wherever you want to. 

Unfortunately for us that XML file is not directly compatible with Final Cut Pro X, so we're going to need to conver it. Thankfully that's quite easy. In order to do that we'll need to download the third-party application (if you don't already have it), 7toX for Final Cut Pro. It'll set you back $10 but will be well worth it.

Now, load up 7toX. It will immediately ask you to point it to an XML file. Point it to the XML file you exported from Premiere Pro. The application will work it's magic and then will begin launching Final Cut Pro X. Finally it will ask you which library you'd like to put your new material into.

And that's about it! You will now have a Final Cut Pro X event with your sequence and your media and you can get to editing!