XDCAM EX is a significantly compressed format. And don't think of it as Apple's XDCAM vs. Sony's XDCAM- they are identical in terms of the way they compress footage and their data rates. The only difference is "Apple's" is directly playable in the QuickTime Player and "Sony's" is not without a third party plugin.
XDCAM is not doing as much crunching to your footage as the H.264 codec that the camera compresses to. But far more damage is being done to your footage as would happen with ProRes. It would be like ripping an MP3 audio file and then re-compressing it to Realplayer- really bad idea quality wise. And your machine is more than up to using ProRes alongside XDCAM EX.
Your best workflow is the following:
Log and transfer the EX1 footage to Apple XDCAM EX- this is the quickest most straightforward way to go.
Then copy the H.264 7D files onto your hard drive. Open them in Compressor and make them into 1080p Apple ProRes (doesn't even need to be ProRes HQ).
Then start a new timeline in FCP with the XDCAM EX as the sequence codec. Drop the ProRes clips into it and continue editing. Make sure you use the RT unlimited settings so nothing needs rendering. You'll get the best possible quality out of both cameras and avoid needlessly recompressing footage that's already pretty compressed out of the camera.
Noah
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