I'm shooting something this week (1920x1080i) on EX-1 that will be edited by someone elsewhere on FCP. I am PC (Avid). He's familiar with tapeless workflow (P2) but never edited EX footage. What's the best/easiest/most foolproof way to deliver the files for him? He's sending me a hard drive. Should I copy everything to his hard drive, including the BPAV folders, Clipbrowser, Sony EX codecs and Transfer utility, or should I just export the files from Avid as quicktimes? If so, with what codec? Also, can Macs still read Fat32 formatted drives? I think that was a snag recently when I tried to do a cross-platform conversion. I don't want it to be a pain for either of us.

Copy all separate BPAV folders in separate folders with a different name :like BPAV 1 , BPAV 2.

If it is a pro editor it will be easy for him to access and download XDCAM Transfer version 2.9 for Mac and XDCAM EX ClipBrowser version 2.5 and also SxS drivers for Mac.

All that stuff is a free download from Sony websites

Do not copy manually , Windows must have also a way to copy BPAV folders.

Do not modify anythings inside those BPAV folders or send him anythings from your Avid.

XDCAM EX ClipBrowser for PC and MAC and all related softwares is available here :

http://www.sony.ca/xdcamex/support.htm

Daniel: The separate BPAV folders bit is not platform specific - same with PC and common practice, but thanks anyway. I was hoping to hear something about the Mac hard drive format. Can you help with that? i.e. can a Mac read a Fat32 drive?

Ronn,

There are a number of ways to skin this cat, BUT you're going to run into some PITA problems. You can hand off the RAW BPAV folders and have the editor use the Sony software. That should work. Alternately, you could make Avid DNxHD quicktimes and have him download the DNxHD codec for the Mac. That also works.

The bigger issue is the physical drives. If you two are not going to be in the same place and he's going to give you a HD formatted FAT32, then you have a 4GB file size limit for a single file. This is a royal pain. Macs cannot read NTFS so you can't reformat the drive to something that works for you.

What I did when facing this issue (I was on PC and doing grading for someone who was on a Mac), I let them format the drive in HFS (Mac native) and bought a copy of MacDrive 7. This utility gets installed on the PC and makes using Mac disks absolutely seamless. I now trade Mac formatted USB, Firewire, Compactflash and SDHC cards like they were native.

It's been worth every dime.

Organize each of the cards' BPAV folders into respective folders named Card 1, Card 2 etc.

Deliver those to the editor, who can then import them directly into FCP using the XDCAM Log and Transfer plugin, found here:

Sony : XDCAM EX Log and Transfer Utility Mac OS : Other (http://www.sonybiz.net/biz/view/ShowContent.action?product=PMW-EX1&site=biz_en_EU&category=XDCAMCamcorders&contentId=1214313427691&sectiontype=Product&preserveContext=true)

Cake!

Fat32 should not be an issue. The Sony XDCAM and SxS file structure is all based on the use of Fat32 storage so no files are bigger than 4Gb. FCP has an option to split any renders etc to 4Gb chunks automatically.

What I did when facing this issue (I was on PC and doing grading for someone who was on a Mac), I let them format the drive in HFS (Mac native) and bought a copy of MacDrive 7. This utility gets installed on the PC and makes using Mac disks absolutely seamless. I now trade Mac formatted USB, Firewire, Compactflash and SDHC cards like they were native.

It's been worth every dime.

Interesting. When I tried to use a Mac formatted drive on my netbook pc using MacDrive it wouldn't read the media, and when I asked MacDrive about it they said some media aren't supported. I wonder now if it wasn't some other part of the chain, like trying to read from the drive via the expresscard/fw adapter.

Interesting. When I tried to use a Mac formatted drive on my netbook pc using MacDrive it wouldn't read the media, and when I asked MacDrive about it they said some media aren't supported. I wonder now if it wasn't some other part of the chain, like trying to read from the drive via the expresscard/fw adapter.

I did this earlier in the year with a Mac formatted 500GB ext drive, and I did it two weeks ago with a Mac formatted compact flash card, plugged into a CF USB adapter. I bought a SanDisk USB adatper that has CF, SDHC, and miniSD slots and it works perfectly.

-P

When you used the drive, what was the connection?

When you used the drive, what was the connection?

It was usb2.0. I remember it had it's own special cable...

Thanks Perrone - that's pretty much what I figured. I saw the MacDrive software but hadn't heard whether it worked on not. I'm going to give it a try. And what PITA doesn't know won't hurt them.

Fat32 should not be an issue. The Sony XDCAM and SxS file structure is all based on the use of Fat32 storage so no files are bigger than 4Gb. FCP has an option to split any renders etc to 4Gb chunks automatically.

That's good info right there...

In my case, we were trying to trade stuff my friend had shot on HDV and captured to his machine. An hour's worth at a time. So that just wasn't happening for us. Good to know the BPAV file structure avoids this problem.

Could still be an issue for the rendered file though once the project is done. If the Mac user is going to finish it though, it should never need to come back except maybe as a proof.

the macdrive people said I could not do clipbrowser on a pc, moving clips to a mac formatted hard drive. Were they wrong? Overly cautious? I repeated the question back to them to make sure I wasn't misstating the issue and they were insistant macdrive and clipbrowser are incompatible.


I think the other way to solve the issue is to format the hard drive as ntsf and load the clips to the hard drive. The editor will need a converter for mac to read ntsf. I can't remember the name of that software but it's out there for mac. Just remember that when you format the drive, you erase everything already on it!

the macdrive people said I could not do clipbrowser on a pc, moving clips to a mac formatted hard drive. Were they wrong? Overly cautious? I repeated the question back to them to make sure I wasn't misstating the issue and they were insistant macdrive and clipbrowser are incompatible.

Interesting. I'll give this a try this week and report back. But honestly, all you'ld have to do is do clipbrowser on the PC, write the files to the PC, then copy them to the Mac formatted disk.

I use a netbook PC with an express card slot to backup my cards to Fat32 USB hard drives. I have no problem reading those drives and the data on my Macs. FCP will capture HDV breaking it into 4Gb chunks on the fly. It might be worth checking for future reference whether your capture software can do the same. I now make a point of trying to keep everything less than 4Gb as I often have to hand off material to PC users and Mac users and Fat32 is the simplest solution.

the macdrive people said I could not do clipbrowser on a pc, moving clips to a mac formatted hard drive. Were they wrong? Overly cautious? I repeated the question back to them to make sure I wasn't misstating the issue and they were insistant macdrive and clipbrowser are incompatible.

After not being able to transfer using Clipbrowser, that's what they told me, too. Maybe it's because I was going Firewire, not usb.

I think you are making this into a bigger problem than it is. The filestructure of the BPAV-folders has nothing to do with wheather you are on a Mac or a PC. The only problem you could run into is the Mac not being able to read the file system of the drive. FAT32 would be the solution to this. The EX1/3-files don't ever exceed the 4 GB limit, even after combining clips. An NTFS-drive should also work. As long as you do not need to write to the drive the Mac should be able to read NTFS-drives.

The EX1/3-files don't ever exceed the 4 GB limit, even after combining clips.

Not true; when you record for long enough withoout pausing, a lot of <4GB files will be created on the card; after copying to the same BPAV directory on an NTFS drive, a single clip of a size much exceeding 4 GB can be created.

For instance, my over 1 hour live music shots usually result in >20 GB clips.

An NTFS-drive should also work. As long as you do not need to write to the drive the Mac should be able to read NTFS-drives.

Not necessarily true. And hasn't been true in my dealings with Mac folks. However, I did find this:

Apple - Downloads - System/Disk Utilities - NTFS-3G (http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/ntfs3g.html)

So it looks like a solveable problem. I wish I had known about this utility before I spent money on Macdrive, but Macdrive still works nicely, and is convenient for me to have.

I decided to try MacDrive again, and this time it worked. Don't know if it's because I bypassed the express card/firewire adapter and used usb instead, or whether it's because it was MacDrive 8 vs. 7, but the pc laptop is indeed seeing the mac formatted drive and clip browser is copying the bpav folder.

It's not playing the clips, but I think that's a function of the netbook capabilities (Lenovo S12).

Not true; when you record for long enough withoout pausing, a lot of <4GB files will be created on the card; after copying to the same BPAV directory on an NTFS drive, a single clip of a size much exceeding 4 GB can be created.

For instance, my over 1 hour live music shots usually result in >20 GB clips.

I should really test this before posting again but I guess I have to live with the shame if I turn out to be wrong anyway...

Piotr - you may very well end up with "clips" that are larger than 4 GB when browsing in Clip Browser or after importing into your editing software or exporting as MXF. BUT as long as the files are native EX-files in a BPAV-folder the FILES should not exceed 4 GB. The metadata informs the system of which 4 GB files should be combined to play back your 20 GB Clip.

Not necessarily true. And hasn't been true in my dealings with Mac folks.

Of course this is not true of all versions of Mac OS. I don't know when the Mac became able to read NTFS but I have not had a problem moving a NTFS-disk back and forth to a friends Mac and he is running some flavour of OS X.

I should really test this before posting again but I guess I have to live with the shame if I turn out to be wrong anyway...

Piotr - you may very well end up with "clips" that are larger than 4 GB when browsing in Clip Browser or after importing into your editing software or exporting as MXF. BUT as long as the files are native EX-files in a BPAV-folder the FILES should not exceed 4 GB. The metadata informs the system of which 4 GB files should be combined to play back your 20 GB Clip.

Ola,

This is an academic discussion; of course on FAT32 media (like the SxS), you cannot exceed the single file size limit.

I was talking about results of combining folders on your non-FAT32 HDD using ClipBrowser (same occurs when you just copy the same take's chunks into the same directory; of course using ClipBrowser, not your OS's tools).

If I mentioned it, is because to me it's important to have each take in a single (however big) file. Editing music videos, I need to cut/split the clips where the music requires it; also I'm usually edit in multi-camera mode. You can realize how many split/cut points I'm getting; to keep things tidy I prefer that there's no additional splits due to any files size limits...

But re: the original thread subject, you're of course right; as long as any single file size is within the FAT32 limits, there should be no probs exchanging them between the two platforms (and using the right tools).