.MXF Workflow on a PC?

[Gerald OConnor]

Downloaded 16gb worth of clips, not many about 80. Had watched a few early ones from the camera on my hd tv not bad. Opened up clips in Sony vegas pro 10.d and in the preview my clips look bad. Very noisy. It plays all my xa10 mt2s files nice. I have tried A bunch of hd settings still not great anyone that uses Vegas pro have any what im doung wrong in there.

I downloaded sonys xdcam viewer for mxf files they play great the first time and then any other clips play choppy. So I reopen the viewer each clip to watch not the best way, lol any other programs that play these better?

I have used tsmuxer for joining all my othe xa10 clips and love the software, won't open xf100 clips? Is there a like software that's works like tsmuxer.

What I was trying to do was upload clips to Vimeo and they don't support mxf either.

So for a pc what is the work flow for the mxf files convert them first to Avi then mpeg4. What's the best way to convert for Vimeo, YouTube clips. I sometimes convert to DVDs but mostly store on an external hdd and play clips through my bluray player. Thanks for any help,

[Charles W. Hull]

Gerald, you should be able to preview the clips just fine with the Canon XF Utility. I'm sure a Vegas user will post, but you could convert the MXF files to Cineform AVI with Neoscene and they would play well in Vegas.

[Gerald OConnor]

Well did a little Searching and reading on this. I know Vegas pro should do what I want. In there manual it has a section for xdcam on transferring clips from the camera into the xdcam explorer window, also in the "render as "area there is a template for xdcam and it does 35mbs at 108060i and a ,mxf template that let's you do 108060i at 50 mbs. My problem has been viewing in the preview window it is a little choppy but that has been with most all my other high bit rate clips but the .mxf files have been grainy in preview but play great through the camera on hd tv. So it's settings and my lack of edit knowledge. I dont do much editing I have been using tsmuxer to join raw clips and that's worked for know. I really need to learn more editing I have a ton of little projects that I would love to get finished. Hopefully a Vegas user can give me some tips and tricks on there workflow. Will work and test more later in Vegas back to entertaining my boys.
Thank you all.

[Robin Davies-Rollinson]

I've been editing mxf clips from my Canon XF300 natively within Vegas Pro 10 with no problems whatsoever.
I ingest the files from the CF card via a card reader and the canon XF Utility. I can select the clips I want with the utility, and import them into a folder on an external hard drive.
When I start up Vegas, I just point the media importer to the mxf folder and away to go. No transcoding or anything.
You get a wide range of render out options, including mxf, so that's just up to you...

[Gerald OConnor]

Thank you Robin, I did some more Vegas pro testing today and I'm doing it the same way you described. Here are my render issues so far. I have a raw .mxf clip rendered as .mp4 and it looses a ton if info an isn't as smooth as the raw file. Goes from a 100mb file to 60mb file.

What I'm trying to do is when I used my xa10 clips the raw file went from camera to the pc, then to an external hdd. I could play the mt2s files from my external hdd through my bluray USB port onto my hd tv's. I could also upload to Vimeo or YouTube with no issues. I would also burn lower quilt DVDs for bluray and they looked good. I don't have a bluray burner.

What is the best render format for what I'm trying to get for viewing Vimeo, and playing all my clips on the external hdd via bluray. The raw .mxf or better .mp4 xdcam files don't play on the ext hdd and i havent been able to upload on to Vimeo yet.

Is there a way to store and play raw files, is there some media player that I can hook up to my bluray or hd tv's to get the best before rendering. Or is it going to be store raw files and once I figure out the best render option to store those files. This is an extra step I didn't have to do before and just didn't know is this is the best way compared to my xa10. I really thank you guys for the help so far.

[Robin Davies-Rollinson]

For uploading to Vimeo, I like to render out with the Sony AVC codec at 1280 x 720p, data rate around 6 - 8kbps.
I've also found that by selecting the "Sharp"" effect, but actually leaving it at "reset to none" will put a bit of bite into the image (don't ask me why this happens, others can't fathom it either; that way madness lies...)
For showing on an HDTV, I use the Western Digital media player, copying over the rendered files to either a thumbdrive or the small WD Passport drive. I've never bothered with BluRay.
As for viewing mxf files other than with the CanonXF Utility, I've downloaded the Videolan player, which is excellent as an all-round media player for the PC.

[Charles W. Hull]

Originally Posted by Gerald OConnor

Is there a way to store and play raw files, is there some media player that I can hook up to my bluray or hd tv's to get the best before rendering. Or is it going to be store raw files and once I figure out the best render option to store those files. This is an extra step I didn't have to do before and just didn't know is this is the best way compared to my xa10. I really thank you guys for the help so far.

Render the clips out to MPEG2 format (.mpg) and they will play through a Blu Ray player. Keep the bit rate around 20Mbps as some Blu Ray players can't handle much more than this.

[Gerald OConnor]

Thanks Guys If I decide to keep the xf100 I will just have to get used to rendering raw files an extra step that im not used to doing. Seems like double the work and double storage needs. But ill keep testing and trying out this great camera. There must be a big advantage for this .mxf raw file that I havnt found out yet. I have been rendering 10 clips of raw .mxf video in Vegas Pro its a 10 minute video and its almost an hour rendering it to sony AVC codec at 108060i and it will be a .m2ts file when done. Is that a normal render time in vegas? Thank You

[Gerald OConnor]

Ok my 10 min clip rendered poorly after about an hour so I tried a bunch of smaller clips and had qn issue with no audio being recorded even though it was checked off to include. I finally got one to render good. What I don't like is it plays so much better from the camera to the tv then the clip to the tv. I know it's in settings just need to find the right combo. What is the advantage of the xf100 mxf video over the xa10 m2ts video if I have to go through the rendering and convert to m2ts anyways. Thanks so far for all the help.

Aidan running test xf100 on Vimeo

[Eric Olson]

There are very few advantages of mxf over m2ts when you are not editing the footage. When editing, the higher bitrate and color resolution of the mxf format help to preserve quality.