We certainly have no shortage of ways to convert Canon DSLR H.264 footage into a more editable format for Final Cut Pro. There’s Compressor, MPEG Streamclip, Magic Bullet Grinder, the Canon EOS Movie Plug-in E1, and Cineform’s NeoScene. And that’s not even mentioning Final Cut Pro’s own conversion ability via Media Manager. There’s another option that’s been making the rounds of Twitter this weekend called 5DtoRGB. This useful tool comes from a company called Rarevision, and they claim to achieve a bit better conversion of your H264 media: “By using a very high quality conversion process, 5DtoRGB gets you as close as possible to the original data off the camera’s sensor while putting the brakes on any additional quality loss.”

UPDATE: Here’s a couple of other blog posts from around the web that’s done some in-depth tests of 5DtoRGB, one from 16×9   Cinema and one from El Skid.

You can read more detail about 5DtoRGB and see some detailed comparisons of 5DtoRGB and the Canon FCP plugin at the Rarevision site. As an added bonus, 5DtoRGB will allow you to add the timestamp as timecode (or assign your own) as well as convert the footage to DPX files for more advanced visual effects work. I think that is unique to this tool.

Rodney Charters has been doing some tests with this tool and discussing the results via Twitter as well. From the looks of his images it appears 5DtoRGB is boosting the image a bit so there might be some detail recovered in the conversion process. Check out his image capture stills of 5DtoRGB and the Canon plug-in. It looks similar to what Cineform does when converting Canon H.264 footage. Visit the Rarevision site to get a download link and try it out for yourself.

Now if we can just get a good Canon H.264 to Avid mxf DNxHD utility, we’ll be covered.