Oh, the Power of the Internet

Before I went out and shot tomorrow's promotional video, I wanted to pull the test footage I shot off the memory card so I could start tomorrow's shoot with a fresh card. This brought up the question "how the heck do I get these .MOV files into Final Cut
Pro?"

I had done some research prior to buying the camera, so I had some sense of the problems I would encounter, and some possible solutions to them. FCP doesn't play nicely with .MOV files so they have to be converted to another format which is easier to edit, usually one of the PoRes codecs Apple now offers. Canon, being market savvy, and making their products more marketable developed a free plug-in for FCP users, allowing them to easily transcode to ProRes.
Canon EOS Plug-in E1 is pretty simple to install and utilizes the log and transfer function in FCP. The only problem is that it doesn't work with the Canon Rebel T2i yet. However, the Bui Brothers have this very easy video tutorial which shows you how to use text editor to make the plug-in work. It took me about 5 minutes to do, and it works perfectly.

Drew Bellware also explained the advantages of purchasing Red Giant's plug-in, Grinder. The main advantage Grinder has over E1 is that if you shoot in 720p60 on your DSLR you can use the plug-in to convert back to 24fps. The technical end of that is complicated, but as Drew explained it to me, it's like speeding up the frame on an old school film camera in production, and slowing it down in post to make for very smooth slow motion clips.

I think in the near future I will end up buying Grinder. I certainly see myself doing a lot of slow motion clips, so $50 seems like a pretty reasonable investment for smooth slow motion.