What's the deal with MXF on Mac's

[Andy Solaini]

Some good advice in this thread already, thanks for the replies.

I got my Mac the other day but haven't set it up yet. Can someone point me in the right direction for some good tutorials (video or text) on FCP? I am a complete novice in FCP and Macs but have some knowledge of Vegas and Prem Pro.

[Philip Lipetz]

If you do not have FCP yet wait a few weeks and get the new FCP X in June for $299.

[Andy Solaini]

I am wondering how well it will run on my Mac because it's a 2010 Core2Duo one not a new i5/i7. My brother runs the current FCP pretty well on his Mac which is three years old so mine might be ok with FCP X.

[Philip Lipetz]

No one know for sure what the system requirements of FCPX are, but it does use the graphics card for acceleration and early hints are that it will be significantly faster than FCP 7, and will process in the background as you work much more efficently than the current FCP.

[Steve Maller]

Originally Posted by Doug Jensen

BTW, if you DO choose to convert to ProRes, then it will take longer to import and the file sizes of the clips will be bigger -- but there will be no benefit. You won't gain anything by converting to ProRes, so just import the clips as "native" and you will love the workflow.

What I'm seeing with FCP7 is that I can definitely work in the native codec with the nominal re-wrap that Log and Transfer does, but the video on the timeline shows with the green bars, indicating that it's only semi-rendered. It seems to go fast enough, but when I told Log and Transfer to transcode to ProRes, there were no green bars, meaning that FCP7 was working (more) optimally.

[Doug Jensen]

It really depends on your sequence settings, doesn't it? I usually don't have to render when I'm editing an HD timeline because I try to use sequence settings that match my raw footage whenever possible. It sounds like you are using sequence settings that are different than your XDCAM raw footage (Canon files are actually XDCAM), thus FCP needs to do some quick rendering. In either case, I prefer to leave my raw footage in the native codec because the files sizes are a lot smaller and the ingest is faster.

[Sam Young]

Originally Posted by Steve Maller

What I'm seeing with FCP7 is that I can definitely work in the native codec with the nominal re-wrap that Log and Transfer does, but the video on the timeline shows with the green bars, indicating that it's only semi-rendered. It seems to go fast enough, but when I told Log and Transfer to transcode to ProRes, there were no green bars, meaning that FCP7 was working (more) optimally.

I do not have the green render lines on my footage after log and transfer with the XF plugin, it is gray and ready to go. Maybe your sequence settings need to be changed?

[Steve Maller]

Originally Posted by Sam Young

I do not have the green render lines on my footage after log and transfer with the XF plugin, it is gray and ready to go. Maybe your sequence settings need to be changed?

Gaaack. My bad. I had a color corrector filter dropped on the clip.
Apropos, it's interesting that FCP thinks the right compressor for my Sequence is XDCAM 422 24P 50mbps. Is that the same as MXF?

[Sam Young]

My MXF clips also say XDCAM HD422 720p50 at 50Mb/s.

[Reinhard Kungel]

Originally Posted by Rajiv Attingal

It is where media manager comes into play.You can't trim your timeline to .mxf using media manager.
Will FCP X change this scenario?
Is .mxf supported in FCP X?.

Rajiv

In FCS I and II media manager was working well: I could shorten clips from different sources (DV, analog, Digibeta, etc.). With FCS III media manager doesn´t work well in my setup and it is not possible to shorten DV, HDV, XDCAm-Clips. Has anybody made better experiences?

Reinhard

[Doug Jensen]

Yes, Media Manager on Final Cut Pro 7 does shorten XDCAM clips and Canon clips on my computer.