FCP7 to Premiere Pro FULL CONVERT

Question

Like many other FCP editors, I'm fully converting to Premiere Pro (PP). This is due, for me personally, FCP still being disgusting behind the times in blu-ray authoring and I have more demand for blu-ray projects now.
I've seen the tutorials on using XML to convert back and forth between the 2 programs, but those only concern sequences in projects.
I'd like to FULLY convert everything to PP. This will include all clips that have been named and organized, though not used in any current projects, and literally try to make mirror copies of the projects.
Also, some clips are several years old and were captured from tape based media in Final Cut Express 4 as HDV 1080i60. These same clips were not converted to pro res when I purchased FCP7 last year. I'd like to have them converted to pro res if that's possible.
Is there a way to perform this? To be able to have all FCP projects become PP projects, without losing the naming structure of the imported clips and also convert every clip to pro res?
Thank you in advance for any and all assistance.

Answer 1

First of all, welcome! We'll try to ease you in...
I'd like to FULLY convert everything to PP. This will include all clips that have been named and organized, though not used in any current projects, and literally try to make mirror copies of the projects.
As far as I'm aware--and I've only done a few FCP -> PPro transfers--you can only bring sequences from FCP across, and not whole projects. That's because, if I'm remembering correctly, that an exported XML is only reflective of a sequence and not of a project. Anything in bins and not used in a sequence would be ignored.
That said, a workaround of sorts would be to create temporary sequences in FCP of all your footage that you want to transfer, and then export those sequences as XML. Not sure if you'll get bins or not, but you should be able to preserve all or at least most of the information you've entered for the clips in PPro.
If you haven't already, definitely download the trial version (fully functioning for 30 days) and do some test runs. I will be totally upfront and tell you that the XML process is not a 100% accurate process, but it's gotten better with each release, and I think it's pretty complete now, as of CS5.5.
Also, some clips are several years old and were captured from tape based media in Final Cut Express 4 as HDV 1080i60. These same clips were not converted to pro res when I purchased FCP7 last year. I'd like to have them converted to pro res if that's possible.
Will you be using PPro on a PC or Mac? If you're staying on the Mac, and you have FCP installed, you'll be able to use your HDV clips directly in PPro without the need for any additional steps. If you're uninstalling FCP, or switching to a PC, Apple HDV is a no-go unless you purchase a third-party decoder like Calibrated{Q} XD Decode. You can thank Apple for that one I have or have been working on a way to losslessly rewrap Apple HDV clips for use in Premiere Pro (going from MOV to MTS), but it's not 100% yet and since I'm on Windows, I don't know how well it would work on the Mac.
Regarding your second point about converting: Premiere Pro doesn't do that. Ever. It's not like FCP where you're usually forced to transcode or rewrap on import. With Premiere Pro, if you can import it, you can edit it. It's got pretty broad support built-in, but you can extend that with the installation of other codecs; simply having QuickTime installed will let you import ProRes, or installing something like the Calibrated XD Decode component will let you deal with things like XDCAM or Apple HDV MOVs that are not natively supported. So again: if you can get the Apple HDV MOVs into Premiere Pro, you're not really going to benefit from converting them (unless you're switching to another platform and don't want to shell out for the decode component).
Hope that answers some questions, and again, if you haven't downloaded the trial, I'd highly recommend taking it for a spin.