sorry if this has been covered elsewhere but my frazzled brain cannot see it anywhere.

My director has my rushes from the doco shoot on a hard drive using a macbook. She doesn't have FCP and if she tried to open a file in quicktime she gets a white screen.

Is this possible without FCP?

VLC should work!
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

regards Dennis

i don't think vlc shows timecode. no way with quicktime?

You will at least need a mpeg2@hl decoder.

what is that?

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2/
But there should also be a freeware alternative to it.

You could try this one.
http://perian.org/#detail

isn't the ex1 codec different though?

I haven't run into any problems with many different mpeg2 decoder yet ;)

it's just i cant test it as have fcp on my computer so it plays fine...

I believe one of the codecs in the quicktime library can be dropped into their QT library so they can play them in QT. I had to give HDV files to a client and had to give them the HDV codec so they could play it in QT (they did not have Final Cut). Apparently one of the codecs in that folder is for XDCAM, although by name none of them seem obvious. You could just send them the whole folder of codecs that you have installed and try that.

B

Phil, I think you just discovered why some people say back up the BPAV folders. That plus ClipBrowser is cross platform viewable (not PPC Mac though).

BTW VLC086e could not play the MOV files on my FCP system.

MPEGStreamclip 1.9.1 can play them but no Time Code (FCP system though)
in Macintosh/Library/QuickTime the only codec the might be related to the EX is AppleMPEG2Codec.component.

You could do a "reverse" test by removing that codec to see if Quicktime then can't play the MOV file. If that's the result then just maybe handing that off to your director might help. It's 180KB so it's small enough to zip and email to your director as an experiment.

BTW once the files are converted to MOV Clip Browser can't seem to play them just in case you were thinking of that route too.

You can use ffmpeg as stated on my blog (http://www.lecentre.net/blog/archives/157). You will get plain Mpeg2 files, wut without sound and timecode (I think).

Latest solution is the Clip Browser, which is a good tol to have, but works only on intel's mac.

sorry if this has been covered elsewhere but my frazzled brain cannot see it anywhere.

My director has my rushes from the doco shoot on a hard drive using a macbook. She doesn't have FCP and if she tried to open a file in quicktime she gets a white screen.

Is this possible without FCP?

Sony XDCAM makes software that is for viewing only (it's not the XDCAM Transfer)... it's called XDCAM Clip Browsing Software. No need for FCP with this. Works like a charm.

http://bssc.sel.sony.com/BroadcastandBusiness/markets/10014/xdcamEXdownloads.shtml

I believe the Clip Browsing software does NOT play the XDCAM files once they are converted to MOV and that is the predicament Phil is in.

The producer has sent his FCP install discs to the Director so she can view.

I have backed up the BPAV folders but the .mov ones are the logged and renamed files by me.

There must a simple solution to this though. I haven't tried the removing file idea yet but will

The thing is each solution has another potential "gotcha."

You could drop the time code reader filter on the clips and render that. That would solve the issue of having the director read the time code. Of course you'd be dealing with a bit of render time. You could export to MPEG4 which could be viewed on both Macs and Windows. That's a bit more render time though.

The producer has sent his FCP install discs to the Director so she can view.

I have backed up the BPAV folders but the .mov ones are the logged and renamed files by me.

There must a simple solution to this though. I haven't tried the removing file idea yet but will

I believe the Clip Browsing software does NOT play the XDCAM files once they are converted to MOV and that is the predicament Phil is in.

Ah. didn't see that part.