With MXF export files, is it really necessary to keep BPAV files?

[Bill Ravens]

"Must be something wrong with your camera as my pictures don't break down on pans. "

hmmm..this is a well know characteristic. You guys sure you look very closely at your footage? I suggest you do a search on this forum, for EX1 compression artifacting.

AFAIK, DVCPRO HD(100mbps) is not as good as DNx100. BUt, again, only my opinion, you will allow me to have one, yes? We are in the realms of esotericism.

Well, as usual, this thread is degenerating into insults and BS with you guys. Time for me to move on.

[Peter Kraft]

Originally Posted by Perrone Ford

1. Both Cineform and ProRes are terrific codecs. ProRes is apple specific and you cannot share data for editing with anyone on a PC using any program. Period. I am not certain if Cineform is PC only, but I've only seen it used on PCs.

Only one point I can comment: ProRes is available both for Mac and Win. So it is not plattform depended as you think, posted August 28, 2008. Have a try here: Apple ProRes QuickTime Decoder 1.0 for Windows

[Rob Collins]

Originally Posted by Fredrik Sperling

I also take my finished story cut in FCP and export it as XDcam MP4, import it to ClipBrowser and put it on my RAID. This way I can easily put it on the SxS-card in the camera, and play it out via the SDI.

This is very interesting Fredrik--could you elaborate on the steps here or point me to another place as I've missed how to do this? I just did Export > Sony XDCAM, had to recompress to XDCAM HD (my sequence was uncompressed), and this generated an MXF file which Clip Browser would not import. Thanks in advance!

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Peter Kraft

Only one point I can comment: ProRes is available both for Mac and Win. So it is not plattform depended as you think, posted August 28, 2008. Have a try here: Apple ProRes QuickTime Decoder 1.0 for Windows

That only works in Quicktime. It does not allow me to take a ProRes file into an editor. So yes, unfortunately, it is as platform dependent as I think.

[Peter Kraft]

Originally Posted by Perrone Ford

That only works in Quicktime. It does not allow me to take a ProRes file into an editor. So yes, unfortunately, it is as platform dependent as I think.

Perrone, as I understand it, Mac OS is a plattform and Win is a plattform. Quicktime to my understanding however is a format/wrapper. If this is not correct, we have a different view of technical terms and I do apologize.

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Peter Kraft

Perrone, as I understand it, Mac OS is a plattform and Win is a plattform. Quicktime to my understanding however is a format/wrapper. If this is not correct, we have a different view of technical terms and I do apologize.

Peter no need to apologize. If you read my post about platforms, it specifically mentions not being able to share files for editing. Playing the videos is another matter altogether. What Apple has done is allow a PC user to play a video created in FCP with the native codec. This has extremely limited use and I don't know ANYONE who'd offer up ProRes quicktime files to a PC user except for checking color or other things.

Right now, when I work with Mac users I typically move files back and forth as PNG quicktimes, or uncompressed. What I had hoped was that Apple would make an implementation of ProRes that would allow me to encode using it, so I could edit and pass work seamlessly off to FCP users in their native codec. Or that I could recieve files from FCP and drop them into my editor. But this is not the case. It's a "view-only" deal that Apple has given us.

[Peter Kraft]

Perrone, I can clearly see your point now. All in all this turns out to be a very interesting topic I'm also very much interested in also from my professional life. Perhaps we have to move on with our discussion to somewhere else, like the NLE forum. To be honest, I'm too tired right now but I'll touch base in about 10 hours time if that is ok with you. P.

[Peter Kraft]

Hi Perrone. You've touched a very interesting topic with your last post here. I'm currently establishing an external video server for our company to archive all of our media assets (video and telecined film) there in the future. Our external video service providers mostly work on win plattforms (Liquid and Avid) while internally we work on Macs (Final Cut Studio). We are searching for a format/codec that runs natively on Mac and on Win machines so that every one both internally and externally can upload a video's last edit for later download somewhere else and to work on that video without having to render first. We work in SD PAL and intend to switch to HD in about two years time.
Our short list of formats: MXF D10, DV50 and AVID Medien Compressed.
Uncompressed is no-no.

Any thoughts?

[Joachim Hoge]

Originally Posted by Perrone Ford

Leonard, I can't fake it. I know very little about editing on FCP. However, something you have pointed out here is one of the major reasons I never will. On to your questions:

My beef with FCP is that you need to have all of your sequences match. I am SO used to Vegas where I can drop ANYTHING on the timeline, cut it, and render out. No need to convert anything at all. I have dropped EX1 footage, miniDV, and RED stuff (2k .mov) onto a timeline, cut it like it was native, and rendered out to Windows Media for streaming. It's all seamless. FCP really needs to get on the ball with this. For a pro level NLE, this is a really stifling limitation.

I regularly mix HDV, XDCAM EX 1080, XDCAM EX 720, MiniDV on the same timeline in FCP. I then edit normally and render it out to whatever format I need. It´s been like this for a long time

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Joachim Hoge

I regularly mix HDV, XDCAM EX 1080, XDCAM EX 720, MiniDV on the same timeline in FCP. I then edit normally and render it out to whatever format I need. It´s been like this for a long time

I read an article about FCP last night about this. Some things still seem weird, but it certainly supports what you've said here.

[Joachim Hoge]

Originally Posted by Perrone Ford

I read an article about FCP last night about this. Some things still seem weird, but it certainly supports what you've said here.

Sometimes weired things happen though. I'll give you that. It's usually because a clip has been rendered into a different format ones before. Seems to happen to dv clips

[Alister Chapman]

You do get problems with many NLE's if you mix DV footage with non DV footage. The problem is that for some reason the field order in DV material is the opposite to everything else. DV footage displays the lower field in each frame before the upper field, while every other codec that I have ever used and TV transmission all display the upper field first. I have no idea why this is but certainly FCP does not like mixing DV and non DV in the same timeline. It works, but the field order gets muddled.

[Peter Kraft]

Alister, the mixup because with the inverse line order of DV is due to technical requirements
I won't explain here in detail. No fingerpointing - ok?

To circumvent the problem it is advisable to de-interlace the DV source material with DVMaker,
Fieldskit, JES de-interlacer, MagicBulleFrames and the likes. Correctly applied you get two identical
fields that do not pose problems with standard interlace video in upper field first format.

It is also possible to change the field order (upper field first instead of lower field first) after
changing the the line numbering scheme: line 2 becomes line 3 and line three becomes line 4 and so forth...

Let me know if you want me to search for the apps.

[Arild Pedersen]

I know a situation when I need the BPAV file set, when I'm using the freeze-mix funtion of the EX3.
See: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/sony-xdca...ntion-ex3.html
Best ArildP

[Rob Collins]

Originally Posted by Arild Pedersen

I know a situation when I need the BPAV file set, when I'm using the freeze-mix funtion of the EX3.

Actually not any more, now that we can put edited video back onto SxS (at least from FCP). It's been noted elsewhere, but I'd missed it until an earlier post in this thread. XDCam Transfer 2.8 allows one to export from FCP an MP4 file that you can put back on SxS in Clip Browser, recreating the BRAV structure. This makes me very happy, and not just for freeze mix. I don't have SDI out from my Mac, and now don't need it to get to tape.