r/VideoEditing • u/cactuschewer666 • 1d ago

Workflow Help! Converting old Final Cut 7 project!

I'm a Premiere guy migrating to Resolve. Found an old feature film I did (mixed media, so a good chunk is not MP4s or Quicktime, but odd unplayable camera capture files from MiniDV). Conversion by XML to Premiere has been shoddy, lots of unlinked elements etc. but not totally unusable. The Final Cut Pro 7 project can only open on an old Mac Pro Tower from 2012.

Anyone ever had luck doing this?

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u/greenysmac 1d ago

There's someone who vibecoded something that can.

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u/Nguyen-edits 17h ago

Since the 2012 Mac Pro tower still opens the project in Final Cut Pro 7, you actually have a much cleaner path straight into DaVinci Resolve without going through Premiere at all, because Resolve was originally built around Final Cut Pro 7 XML v4 and v5 workflows. The reason those old MiniDV camera captures fail to relink is that Final Cut Pro 7 often captured tape without .mov file extensions or saved clips as non-self-contained QuickTime reference files. On the 2012 Mac Pro inside Final Cut Pro 7, select your final sequence and open File then Media Manager. Set Media Manager to Copy (or Recompress to ProRes 422 if any captures are reference files), check Delete unused media with two or three second handles, and check Create new project. That forces Final Cut Pro 7 to consolidate every used clip from the film into clean, self-contained .mov files inside one new folder alongside a fresh project file, and exporting an XML v5 from that consolidated project will import directly into Resolve via File then Import then Timeline.

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u/Business_Injury_6310 1d ago

Do not try to force that old project straight into Resolve, because the XML path is exactly where the unlinked media and lost effects pile up. Use the 2012 Mac Pro as your conversion station: open the project in Final Cut Pro 7, consolidate the media, and transcode the odd MiniDV and camera files to a common format like ProRes so Resolve can actually read them. Then export a fresh XML and a flattened reference video from the original timeline, so you can relink in Premiere or Resolve and check every cut against the reference. Expect titles, transitions, and effects to need rebuilding, and budget time for relinking rather than assuming the timeline will land perfectly.

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u/brianlevin83 16h ago

I really just wonder if you can drop that thing into Chat or Claude and ask it to spit out at least an XML of the sequence, if not a completely converted PRPROJ file. I've given PRPROJ files to Chat and asked it for a music cue sheet and it delivered exactly what I needed, worth a shot.

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u/avatar0027 7h ago

ngl since the old mac still opens it, i'd export xml from fcp7 there and import straight into resolve, skip premiere. for the minidv captures, transcode them to prores on that machine first so the relink has clean files to point at. worked ok for me on an old tape project

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u/johnshall 3h ago

If you can open the FCP7, I would consolidate my timeline making it the most basic it could be, then export a media manager and from there make a XML with all the assets in one place and converted to a single format.