Fcp 7 + mxf?

F

flaminio

Member
Had a sobering experience last week. My workflow is to import the P2 cards w/ the Panasonic importer, then ingest into FCP. I then back up the ingested file then once in a while dump the MXF media as space allows. I know, it's best to keep the original MXF media, but it's kind of a PITA keeping tack of two formats for backup and production and I don't see myself ever leaving FCP.

Anyway, I was working on the project and a few days later I notice a video glitch in one of the clips. I went and looked at the raw FCP file in QT and it was there too. Luckaly, I still had the MXF media still on my drive, so I did a fresh ingest and went on my way.

So, I'm thinking I need to change things up here. I was about to put in for Raylight and then started thinking the smart money is FC Studio 3 is likely months away and maybe Apple will include MXF support. So maybe wait and see.

I searched and didn't find any rumors or anything, but wondering what the sense is around here.
 
To be quite honest I doubt apple will change their workflow to incorporate native mxf support.

Their entire studio is built around quicktime and with the introduction of ProRes they have created a workflow that simply transcodes non-compliant or newer codecs into their own codec (AVCam, HDV, ect), I highly doubt that they will start adding support for non QT formats.

While I certainly hope that they add native mxf support, raylight is very cheap and is a great solution to the problem you described.

I ran into a similar situation where I was editing a project and they threw out all their MXF files, simply keeping the quicktimes from FCP as their masters. They where using a different version of FCP than I was at the time (I was on 5.4.1 they where using 6) and I was unable to import the 1080 footage to edit it, all their 720 footage worked fine, but I had to go and upgradte to be able to read the 1080 clips.
Had they kept the mxf files this would not have been an issue. While mine was easily resolved with an update, a situation like yours where the capture scratch data gets corrupted (This does happen on occasion) would be catastrophic.

Think about this: FCP7 as you mentioned is probably at least 3 months away, raylight right now is what? $200? Just on the time you save re-wrapping the MXF files to QT alone you'd pay for it many times over before FCP7 even begins to come out, much less get all the bugs ironed out.
 
However, Dan, Apple did indicate at IBC that it would provide native AVCHD editing in the next version of FCP.

That isn't a rumor.
 
Ah thanks David, I haven't edited in a while and have been somewhat out of the loop, that certainly does give hope to eventual native MXF editing.
 
Raylight for Mac is on sale for $150 as of right now. It's a good tool for ingesting but also gives you the ability to make p2 card ready MXFs that you can put back on your HVX so you can use it as a display device. Plus it gives you a metadata slate and can organize clips with the UserClipname, Programname and Volumename.

Best,
Andy
 
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