Red Giant Software has released an affordable, very easy-to-use utility geared toward the DSLR shooter called Magic Bullet Grinder. Its purpose in life is simple and straightforward: transcode your clips from the relatively post-unfriendly native H.264 codec into something more usable. It’s geared mainly at Final Cut Pro users, since ProRes is the main choice for output. For the non-FCP users out there, you also get a PhotoJPEG option. In addition to the transcode you can also assign new timecode based on a user setting, conform the frame rate to 23.976 (handy when making slow motion from those 720 59.94 files), as well as transcode a lower-resolution offline version of the clip. You can get a bit more info on Grinder at the ProLost blog as well as check out a piece I wrote after testing a near final release version of the software.

It’s quite simple to use and the startup window tells the user just how it works:

There’s really no simpler way to convert DSLR footage for edit than that. This is only version 1.0, so let’s hope it only gets better. Best of all, it’s completely affordable at $49. There’s also a free demo available.