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Native MXF editing in FCP
This is really cool for us P2 Mac guys.
The guys at DV Film have released RayLight for Mac.
This will allow you to work from the native mxf files in fcp.
I just bought the software and tried editing from my MacBookPro with my Duel-Systems adapter and it worked great.
I was able to play 4 720p24 clips off the card at full res.
No Importing or anything. Instant editing!
There is no time code or access to any other meta data at this time, but they are working on it.
This will make the workflow a lot easier. Now I will not have to keep MXF’s and QT’s on the system.
Just thought I would share 🙂
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Art AldrichLeader, NJ FCP UG
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4 Replies
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I’m curious about this, and why this is an advantage.
i’ve done a couple of P2 media jobs – but none where I was editing directly off the card. Is that common? Is it an advantage because it’s just that much quicker?
For 99% of jobs, I would imagine that even in MXF editing, you’d still have to copy footage from the P2, or the P2 store, or the Fire-Store to a media drive, right? If so, what’s the advantage in staying in the MXF format?
For that matter – is there an advantage to backing up/archiving the raw MXF files in FAT32 format, as opposed to the converted quicktimes? If you’re going to restore the media for FCP, won’t you just be converting them to quicktimes again? (unless editing MXF natively, of course…)
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[David Jahns] “I’m curious about this, and why this is an advantage.
i’ve done a couple of P2 media jobs – but none where I was editing directly off the card. Is that common? Is it an advantage because it’s just that much quicker?
It’s not common with FCP because up until now it was flat out impossible. Yes it is quicker, you get faster playback/more streams in real time (or at higher resolution) and no waiting.
For 99% of jobs, I would imagine that even in MXF editing, you’d still have to copy footage from the P2, or the P2 store, or the Fire-Store to a media drive, right?
Yes, BUT you can do it later after the editing session is done or you when you are taking a break.
If so, what’s the advantage in staying in the MXF format?
The quicktime format does not tolerate errors.
For that matter – is there an advantage to backing up/archiving the raw MXF files in FAT32 format, as opposed to the converted quicktimes? If you’re going to restore the media for FCP, won’t you just be converting them to quicktimes again? (unless editing MXF natively, of course…)”Correct, the backups will remain MXF files and can be stored on PC or Mac format drives. If you get a bad sector and have to repair the drive the raylight Link will allow you to cut around the bad frames, whereas the quicktime format will probably just wipe out the entire shot.
But the main advantage is the backup process is taken out of the critical time workflow. It can be done at night for example when your crew is sleeping.
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Here’s an example: we did a several-weeks-long shoot for an infomercial for Prudential Americana real estate, and shot 600 GB of footage.
The footage was to be edited on FCP. Cards were offloaded in the field to two 300GB hard disks.
When it comes time to edit, on Windows I could just plug in the drives and edit. On FCP, we had to go out and buy two more drives, and then wait hours and hours while FCP tediously imported and converted each file over to Quicktime, which (in the process) also threw away the metadata and made the files incompatible with all Windows PCs.
With Raylight, none of that would have happened. We could have edited immediately from the existing drives, and backed up or archived overnight, whatever was the most appropriate action. But it removes a huge barrier between you being able to start working on your footage.
I’ve grown quite addicted to this workflow, and won’t/don’t use a Mac primarily because (up until now) it’s been impossible. The Mac workflow has been (IMO) just one step above a tape-based workflow. But with Raylight it fully embraces the full power of what a tapeless workflow should be.
This may not seem like such an issue with little cards, but we’re only about five months away from having 32GB cards. You’ll really start to care when every single card takes half an hour to import/convert, especially when you know that there’s really no good reason for you to have to wait that time because with Raylight you could already be editing and finishing your project.
That said… try the demo. If you don’t see how it makes a difference for you, don’t buy it, but I can say that on the PC I can’t imagine not having this capability, and now that it’s on the Mac I’m very close to buying another Mac/FCP station; something I wouldn’t have considered doing as long as there wasn’t native MXF editing.
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OK, I can certainly see the advantages in that scenario. Especially since the MBPro’s don’t read the cards directly like the G4 PB’s did. When I shot with the P2 ayear ago, we used 4GB P2’s and a G4 laptop, and the ingesting directly into an FCP project seemed just about as fast as downloading the card to a P2 store or external drive.
But if you have to download MXF to disc, and then create another step for QT convert/ingest – that will certainly slow you down a bit with a lot of footage.
Thanks for the tips guys!
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