Lost in the riddle...

[RamonHVX]

Hi you all!

I am new to this forum. Before making this series of questions I promise I read as much as I could from this forum, other forums and many assorted internet pages. To tell you truth, I am completely lost.

I have being in the video editing world for some time now. I started many years ago with a motion MJEG card, then came my wonderful Matrox RT2500 and finally I decided to leap into the HD world, but as it happened to many PC platform video editors I find no ultimate production system to work with.

First it was the election of the camera for independent film making, which is my next idea. After a lot of reading I am decided to purchase the Panasonic HVX200. I am sure about the latter. I hope so.

The problem is that editing in a PC system is not clear for me. I will wait until FS-100, Cineport or Citidisk HD are finally released so that capturing does not represent a problem.

The riddle is … how to edit MXF (Panasonic P2) files in the PC platform?

I have a dual Xeon 3.4 system with 4 gigs RAM, SATA Raid-0 (1TB), Nvidia Quadro FX 3540 graphics card, Firewire 800 external disks (2 x Lacie), 2 monitors for production and a Dell HD TFT display. I think I have the right gear but the software is still uncertain.

To summarize, I have the FS-100 loaded with MXF files (or the P2 card) from my HVX200, a cup of coffee and my wife and daughter out in a short couple day trip.

Now what?

DVFilm Raylight: No user interface. You have to copy a small MS-DOS-like utility to the directory where your MXF’s are at and then run it. The result is 2 files in your hard drive: The raw MXF and the intermediate codec AVI file. (Do not like this at all!)

Avid Xpress Pro: Avid claims to support native Panasonic P2 in a next release above version 5.2. A friend of mine who owns a copy of Xpress Pro HD 5.2 tried one of my files and the software complains with “NOT AN XDCAM COMPLIANT FILE”

Matrox Axio LE: Fantastic!!! Pricey!!!! but no support for all HXV200 resolutions and frame rates.

Canopus Edius: ONLY Edius HD supports Panasonic MXF’s but it is very expensive.

Avid Liquid Pro: Supports DVCPRO HD but only in the CHROME HD ELITE version. Over $11900. Holly shxx!

Premiere: They are turning a deaf ear to all this.

Autodesk Combustion: No support so far.
I like to load Apple’s web site in my browser from time to time just to enjoy looking at the features of Final Cut Pro… then I cry for half an hour.

I am begging for your help.

I have a very powerful gear, nice camera, spare time and coffee and do not know what to do with my video files.

Any help will be very very very appreciated

Ramon Lopez

 

[The Machinist]

Honestly.

Think about switching over to Mac and FCP. I made the switch myself after my workplace abandoned its Matrox 2500 for several Apple systems. Just one week with FCP and I abandoned Premiere.

I'm sure you could sell your current PC setup and use that to mostly cover the purchase of a Quad G5 and a couple of Apple Cinema HD displays.

Final Cut is a very intuitive program and you will pick it up rather easily.

You could keep waiting for a PC solution or sell your gear now and order a new Apple system and be editing your HVX footage in a couple of weeks or even less.

 

[Barry_Green]

DVFilm Raylight: No user interface. You have to copy a small MS-DOS-like utility to the directory where your MXF’s are at and then run it. The result is 2 files in your hard drive: The raw MXF and the intermediate codec AVI file. (Do not like this at all!)

Raylight works okay, and probably would work well on your system. It would let you use Premiere.

Avid Xpress Pro: Avid claims to support native Panasonic P2 in a next release above version 5.2. A friend of mine who owns a copy of Xpress Pro HD 5.2 tried one of my files and the software complains with “NOT AN XDCAM COMPLIANT FILE”

Your friend doesn't know how to run it for the P2 files. I've got Avid and you have to import the P2 files through the Media Tool and it works fine. Avid doesn't yet support every mode, but it does support a lot of the modes and it supports them well. Avid works fine.

Matrox Axio LE: Fantastic!!! Pricey!!!! but no support for all HXV200 resolutions and frame rates.

Axio LE is not fantastic for the HVX because it has no support at all for MXF files. Axio, AFAIK, only works if you "capture" the footage in through the firewire port.

Canopus Edius: ONLY Edius HD supports Panasonic MXF’s but it is very expensive.

Not correct at all. Edius Broadcast has full native support for everything the HVX does, and it's only $999 retail. It would run very well on your system and it has end-to-end MXF support.

You really should look at Edius again, it's probably the best solution for you, and certainly the least expensive.

Avid Liquid Pro: Supports DVCPRO HD but only in the CHROME HD ELITE version. Over $11900. Holly shxx!

Can't help you there. Don't use Liquid, don't know what they support. It's my understanding that Liquid doesn't even have 24P timeline support yet, for end-to-end production. Even the base version of Liquid supports DVCPRO50 MXF files, so an NAB update may bring 24P timelines and DVCPRO-HD support. And again, it won't be $12,000.

Premiere: They are turning a deaf ear to all this.

Yes they are. But you can use Raylight with Premiere.

I like to load Apple’s web site in my browser from time to time just to enjoy looking at the features of Final Cut Pro… then I cry for half an hour.

Why? Just get it. Macs aren't that expensive. Even a Mac Mini at $600 can run 720p and some 1080p support! And the new Intel Mac Mini will have a dual-core processor at $799 retail and is claimed to be five to six times faster than the current Mini.

Or there's the Dual G5 desktop like the one I bought. It was under $2,000 and it supports everything I can throw at it, with fantastic multiple stream realtime support and realtime transitions. Why cry about it? Instead, why not just get it? It works very, very, very, very well.

The way I looked at it, a Mac Mini doesn't really cost anymore than a single 4GB P2 card. If you're willing to buy a $2,000 FireStore, why not a $2,000 Mac then instead of looking at $5,000 Axio systems etc?

I am begging for your help.

I think the best option for you right now is to get Edius Broadcast. It's probably going to run very well on your computer, it has (reportedly) the best MXF support of any NLE out there right now, and its street price should be somewhere around $800.

 

[TwistedLincoln]

I was in a similar position to you. For me, however, switching to Mac just didn't make sense-- I already had a Dual Opteron 2.2ghz with 4gb of ram just for video editing, so it just seems wasteful to start all over by buying a Mac. I've decided to go with a combo of Edius Broadcast and Vegas 6 -- Vegas 6 for Dolby Digital surround sound creation and editing on my lower-end machine, and Edius Broadcast for editing HVX footage on my Opteron.

Barry: do you actually use Edius Broadcast? I've been trying to find a decent review on it (particularly in regards to the hardware dongle/activation aspect), but it seems that nobody out there has written one. I'd at least like to be able to compare its features with FCP for the sake of argument... maybe a MAC would sound more attractive if FCP gave me something Edius Broadcast can't.

 

[RamonHVX]

Well,

Barry, thanks dude, you saved my life. I am telling you. After all that reading
I was getting more and more confused about the whole deal. Now you opened
my eyes.

I will probably get Edius Broacast or Raylight in the hope they change
the user interface to something more friendly.

By the way, is there some type of acceleration card that could help me
upon rendering in Premiere?

Thanks to Cam-ra and the Machinist too.

Ramon

 

[izoneguy]

RamonHVX,
I had the same concerns. Been a PC user forever.
I finally bought the 17" Apple PB with FCP Studio.
I tried the Edius software but did not like it.
FCP has it's quirks but I can see that working with
the HVX in combo with FCP will probably be the
logical solution.