XDCAM EX Footage Downconverting Question

bkmvincent

bkmvincent

Active member
I've got a ton of XDCAM EX footage in .mp4 wrapper on my Mac and I want to downconvert all of it to DV-NTSC. The thing is I want to do side-cut instead of letterbox or anamorphic. What's the quickest way of doing this?

Edit: Hmm, maybe this should be in the Post Production area instead. Crap!
 
bkmvincent said:
I've got a ton of XDCAM EX footage in .mp4 wrapper on my Mac and I want to downconvert all of it to DV-NTSC. The thing is I want to do side-cut instead of letterbox or anamorphic. What's the quickest way of doing this?
Click to expand...

A question to find out if you have the conditions to do this...

Do you have the Sony import/conversion software on your machine? Most notably you need the XDCAM Clip Browser and the XDCAM Transfer app (don't install the newer XDCAM Browser app. It combines the 2 apps previously mentioned but removes essential functiionality).

XDCAM Clip Brower is key for what you want to do.

Before this however, you need to have the XDCAM material in it's original state from the SxS cards to whatever media they were recorded on in camera. If you see the BPAV folder structure you are probably in good shape.

If you haven't done any of the "rewrapping" you need to open the Clip Browser and then through the app locate the RAW footage (in the BPAV folder structure, if not you are not going anywhere). You can do a copy/rewrap of the files or you can do a software down-convert through the File > Export Menu. If you have an NLE like Final Cut you can take the rewrapped material and then import it into FCP using XDCAM Transfer. This second step takes little time.

If you are using another editor, it depends on what version you have. Some let you import without a rewrap and other don't. Most people edit in high def and then render out to std def on completion. Pillarboxing, 16x9 choices you should be able to do that in your export and of course if you go the NLE route you can do it there.

Good luck.
 
After converting the file to a type you can edit, just open an NTSC sequence. Put the XDCAM footage in that. Re-size the footage so it fills the NTSC (4x3) frame. Then export the final file as NTSC. It's simple and it looks great.
 
Thanks for the suggestions guys. The reason I didn't want to edit in HD first was because we shot with a second cam shooting in SD. The video was for a project that was intentionally supposed to look old/cheesy (think early 80's chroma key). So I figured if I did a batch conversion and let it run over night I could just edit the entire piece in SD and be able to play back all my chroma key sequences without having to do a full render. I'll definitely try and explore some of these options though if need be!
 
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