.mov Files from Canon EOS 5D Mark II and Ipod Nano

Question

I am looking at purchasing both these items with their promise to
deliver video files in the .mov format.
I am wondering whether anyone can confirm that is a 1-step transfer
into FCP, or is there fine print I need to read ? I understand going in
that the video quality of the Nano will be what it is, but wonder also
if anyone has experience with the video coming out of the Canon EOS 5D
Mark II ?
Thanks for any help,
Sterne

Answer 1

Let's get into a little more detail.
The moniker ".mov" doesn't really mean much. It means "a movie that QT can play back" - a very generic statement. Saying that a movie is a QuickTime movie is saying nothing of the underlying codec. You might have a hundred movie files with the ending ".mov" and they could all be using different codecs like: Motion Jpeg, DV, XDCam, DVCPro, DVCPro HD, H.264 and so on.... So to answer the question, "...Does the fact that it is already an .mov file make it more of a drag and drop thing?" The answer is, No. Here's why:
The 5D (and 7D) shoot a ".mov" file, yes. But specifically it's of the H.264 flavor. This is a burdensome codec. It's processor intensive. It's not meant for editing, it's meant for delivery. Furthermore, if there are going to be advances with it's native editability it's going to happen at the happen on hardware and software that are of the most current standards. And besides, that's still a big if.
There are no current machines that have true drag-drop-edit (without pain) the raw Canon .mov files. If you're thinking your current computer can't handle "hi-def footage" then it most certainly won't handle the (HD) camera native files. That doesn't mean you can't edit the footage. You'll just be back to what's been mentioned before: transcoding. You can always transcode to the highest quality codec that your Mac can handle and edit in that format. DVCPro HD? DV, at least! Don't know - whatever your machine can handle.
Summary: Native 5D camera files ---> FCP = painful, even with newest hardware/software. Rule is transcode. This is the only way people are efficiently working with this footage right now.
Footage Quality - it's quite nice! There's tons of video all over Vimeo with it now. It's a great concept that will only get better. Snoop around here too. There are tons of sample footage on the web. It is highly compressed though. All that info, and with tiny files, the information is going someplace! Being discarded. Learning to maximize an environment's given conditions will lead to minimizing the camera's inherent artifacts.
The next question to ask yourself is do you want this camera mostly for the HD movie mode or photography? The new 7D has some compromises compared to the 5D but has some things that the 5D doesn't, yet. Like framerates. The 5D is, for now, strictly 30P, while the 7D sports 24P, 25P 30P and 50P & 60P at 720P (instead of the full 1920x1200).
Hopefully that answers some questions regarding FCP dealing with the native camera files. Other than that: 5D or 7D? Both have some worthwhile merits to consider.