Hi there,
I had to copy my first CF card to my MBP the other evening, so I could then erase the card and use it again.
I made to sure NOT to mess with the folder structure. I simply copied the CANON XF folder on the card, intact, into a new folder on my laptop titled CARD 1 CANON, to differentiate it from the next two cards I'd be copying over later.
But now when I try to use Canon XF Utility to check the footage, the Utility doesn't 'see' this folder.
I don't understand.
I've tried everything I can think of. I've taken the CANON XF folder out of the CARD 1 folder, in case XF Utility can't see it if it's inside something else, but that didn't work. I've tried to open individual files, but that didn't work either.
Would really appreciate any suggestions!
Malcolm

Are you able to import the files in to an nle?

I don't know, but did you also try putting the CONTENTS folder on the top level of the drive - that's the way it appears when you look at the card in the Finder.

CANON XF is listed at the volume level, then CONTENTS-->CLIPS001-->CLIP folders, etc. so maybe CONTENTS needs to be at the top??

Maybe make a Disc Image (using Disk Utility) of the XF folder and mounting that?

Sorry, that's all I got.

After you have copied the CONTENTS folder from the card in its own folder e.g. CARD1.
You open xf utility and SET VIRTUAL MEDIA to CARD1. You can only do this once.
Then you are able to see the clips in xf utility.
If you have Adobe software use the Bridge to view the clips.

Thanks everyone, for your ideas. I had to meet a deadline the day after I posted, so I started looking into other software that claimed to be able to do this sort of thing. I hate buying something that in my heart of hearts I know won't work as advertised, so luckily I remembered I own something called Episode, that I use all the time to make small, screening versions of QT files, but I'd never tried it for anything else. Anyway, I tried it, and it worked perfectly. Such a relief.
I'm still confused as to why my file structure wasn't recognized by XF Utility, so I will read over your thoughts and suggestions and see if I can figure anything out now that my deadline has been successfully met.
I do appreciate the help!
Malcolm

Could be your camera firmware version & XF Utility not match. Try to update your XF Utility to newer version.

What NLE are you using? Last year I discovered essentially by accident (lack of sleep) that my NLE (Sony Vegas Pro 12) could load the continuous MXF files perfectly from the copied CONTENTS folders of all 4 CF cards from the long-form project without doing anything with XF Utilities.

In fact, the first year of this annual event when I did everything I was "supposed" to do with XF Utilities, I got a lot of ghostly and intermittent memory errors at the file joints using the virtual media created by XF Utilities. Later I still had the same problem using the Export MXF command.

This past year, everything was perfectly clean and all I had to do was the two steps of copying the CONTENTS folder of each card, then importing them into my NLE.
Later realizing I had never done that before.

I am under the impression that the XF Utility software is necessary to stitch together clips that exceed a certain file size (4GB?). Use the Export MXF option under the Edit menu to save just the video files for editing. For the archival copy, use the backup function, which saves everything in one folder.

Similar discussion here
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/canon-xf-series-hd-camcorders/522360-importing-plain-xf100-mxf-files.html

Mark