Old post but have something to share here. Although Avid claims that Media Composer after 1.5 support MXF importing, when using MXF videos in Avid Media Composer, users always meet unexpected problems, as .mxf format is efficient, but simply isn’t engineered for complex post production effects processing. One of the common solutions is linking to the H.264 MXF files via AMA, then transcode in Media Composer. But incompatibility still exists among different camcorder manufactures. We’d like to find something can work with all MXF files.
What we’ve found is that DNxHD format delivers both efficiency and quality without compromises. So, before getting MXF files into Avid Media Composer, you’d better convert MXF to DNxHD MOV first. This format will allow you to drop your MXF files directly into Media Composer without rendering.