How are users working with MXF files in PC ?

D

dLAND

Member
Dear peers,

The files on the cards are always MXF if I am not wrong, how is everybody dealing with this format in a PC?

Can we only work with them in Avid Express, Premiere and Edius Cannonplus?

Is there a way to transform this files in a PC?

Thanks for all your inputs, I find myself a bit lost in this post area.
 
The files on a p2 card, are just that... Files... Data... You can stick a card into your pcmcia slot (if you have one), or plug your camera up and transfer the data over to your hdd location just as you would any other data... It's not just mxf files. It is a contents folder with other folders inside. Audio, clips, video, etc, etc.

To work with the actual footage...
You can view it with Panasonics free P2 Viewer.
You can edit the files natively in Avid (with pretty thorough support for the various formats you can record), and in EDIUS Broadcast with complete and thorough support.
There is also complete support for all of the recording modes of the HVX in Final Cut (after files are re-wrapped to .mov's for use in Final Cut.)
With Premiere, or Vegas, you can use a program like Raylight. The latest versions of Raylight allow you to work with the mxf files from the p2 card natively within the above mentioned NLE's. Although without the great realtime capabilities that you would get from EDIUS for example. At least not when comparing use on similarly configured systems. Older versions of it (and current versions of Cineform's aspect HD?) First re-wrap the mxf files to .avi's so they can be used within Vegas and Premiere.

Hope that pretty much is what you were looking for...

Jason
 
what other programs were you wanting to work in them with - the only thing that comes to mind is Vegas and raylight and cineform will both work with vegas. I use Premiere and Cineform's Aspect HD and love it. Its a bit pricey but Aspect's render engine for premiere is rather impressive and gives me real time 720 and 1080 footage several layers deep (at least 3 if not more - starts to depend on what you are doing with them). They all have their ups and downs though and have been covered here alot.
 
We installed the p2 viewer and p2 drivers on our PC and all the mxf files can be viewed real time and edited like raw avi's!
 
I just drag and drop the files onto my HDD and work on them from there, pretty simple, I am going to start making backups onto DVD-R's (Dual-layer, for the 8 gig cards)

I edit in Avid
 
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Newest editor to the party is SpeedEdit from NewTek; it also natively supports MXF files.

Most editors work with them already, right now. For the ones that don't, there are file conversion utilities (such as Raylight which is lossless, or CineForm which transcodes to the CineForm codec) which will let you work with the files in any AVI-compatible application.
 
Barry_Green said:
Newest editor to the party is SpeedEdit from NewTek; it also natively supports MXF files.
Click to expand...

OMG, that is an absolute shame that SpeedEdit will edit MXF natively but not PremPro even after Adobe acquired SeriousMagic.

Why am I giving Adobe my money?
 
Speed Edit
Thank to Tim Jenison. The father of the Video Toaster, and Toaster Flyer. for the MXF support. I just ordered Speed Edit 2 days ago. Being and old Video Toaster, and Toaster Flyer, I look forward to working with the new Speed Edit.
Mule
 
Thanks a lot for you all guys,

Jason brilliant description, Barry great news.

My options then for PC will be Edius Broadcast (complete support) or Avid. To use Premiere or Vegas I will need to convert to .avi with Raylight (loseless) or Cineform aspect HD. But then is Speed Edit which I can also work natively.

I guess I got it.
All the best
 
dLAND said:
Thanks a lot for you all guys,

Jason brilliant description, Barry great news.

My options then for PC will be Edius Broadcast (complete support) or Avid. To use Premiere or Vegas I will need to convert to .avi with Raylight (loseless) or Cineform aspect HD. But then is Speed Edit which I can also work natively.

I guess I got it.
All the best
Click to expand...


Please note!! The Raylight plug-in allows you to put the MXF files directly into Premiere and Vegas and edit native DVCPROHD without losses.
 
Right -- there's really no PC editor I can think of that doesn't support HVX footage right from the MXF files. Most editors do it natively, and Premiere and Vegas do it through Raylight (which works brilliantly, by the way!)
 
I'm editing a long form with about 300 1080i .mxf files on NewTek's SpeedEDIT.
I do have a beefy computer, but it rocks as the name indicates. Quad splits over another video track with each having animated GFX plays real time!

Friday afternoon the client suddenly wanted a DVD to review over the weekend so I copied the HD timeline, opened a 486 timeline, pasted the project on a SD timeline and played directly to the DVD recorder. Wala! The client didn't know it was just that easy. I should have said it would take several hours on the clock! :thumbsup:

I also have SpeedEDIT on my PC laptop. On a 3 day out of town shoot, it was handy to dump the footage on a timeline and check dailies before heading home. I then copied those timelines to my main edit system so I was that much farther ahead when I got back.

SpeedEDIT is definately worth checking out.
 
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