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And so it begins – MXF for FCPX (and other NLE MXF “assistants”)
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[Jeremy Garchow] “I don’t know how it works quite yet, but my guess is that it puts a link in the event to the original media. The MXFImport component works like this in QT and fcp7 now. Using the QT framework, the component simply presented the information to the OS. It’s very slick.”
From the description, it doesn’t sound like it works in FCPX at all. My interpretation of the website’s description is that it’s reading the MXF media and dynamically presenting that MXF media as if it were a QuickTime file on a virtual volume.
That’s a bit different than MXFImport, which was a QuickTime component and could actually work within the QuickTime framework. Since AV Foundation doesn’t support QuickTime components, I think they are going deeper, Inception-style, and virtualizing the media in a QuickTime wrapper, on-the-fly, on a virtual disk that must be mounted.
In other words, instead of getting QuickTime to read MXF as MXFImport did, I think VirtualMXF reads the MXF files from disk itself and pipes the data into virtual QuickTime files on a virtual volume.
One of the pro features listed is multiple mounts, which suggests to me that the non-Pro version can only handle a single MXF source at a time.
Of course, this is all my interpretation of the description on the developer’s web site.
[Jeremy Garchow] “My guess, and I hope to find out shortly, is that with FCPX’s transcode feature, you’d be able to make high or low res media at anytime. This is a huge benefit if my guess is correct. It means you have instant access to the media as needed, and you can make .movs if you need to move the edit to another system/machine that doesn’t have the MXF software.”
Yeah, that is cool. Start work right away, then transcode to have a more portable project.
[Jeremy Garchow] “I am also intrigued about how it says you can map metadata between 7 and X via XML. More speculation, I’m sure there’s a reason the pro version isn’t available yet and might point to more FCPX XML updates in the near future, but what do I know…”
There’s a lot of other functionality in the pro version beyond FCPXML support, so I wouldn’t immediately assume they’re held up by a major update — but all that aside, the metadata mapping via XML looks like a great feature. This goes a long way to adding the missing interoperability I was lamenting earlier. It’s pretty exciting.
And this all goes back to a point you made months ago — it would be great if MXF were better-supported natively across all NLEs and platforms.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “From the description, it doesn’t sound like it works in FCPX at all. My interpretation of the website’s description is that it’s reading the MXF media and dynamically presenting that MXF media as if it were a QuickTime file on a virtual volume.”
Yep, I hear that, but with fcpx’s consolidation and transcode tools, it seems you should be able to pull this in to an event by drag and drop. The virtualization might just be the first step. It says that the source can be any media, the virtualization probably collects any necessary parts (in the case of op-atom), then once that’s all collected (metadata and otherwise) it’s now available to the OS:
“After defining a “MXF Source”, which can be a folder, a whole hard disc drive, an USB Stick or even a server volume, it automatically and immediately originates a new – virtual disk drive – on the Desktop in which all original MXF clips are virtualized as FCP X compatible Movies. Drag&Drop these movie files into FinalCutPro X or nearly any other Mac OS X Application for audio visual content ”
Once in FCP, my guess is that you’ll be able to transcode if you want. The virtualization is probably what needs to happen without QT being what it used to.
This is kind of what the component did, you just didn’t need to virtualize as it was all done in QT behind the scenes.
The multiple mounts probably mean you could multiple drives as “MXF SOURCE” instead of having one folder or drive (which can probably have as many MXF folders/files as you want). Or have multiple p2 cards on your desktop if you’re working straight from a card.
The greyed out pro options look interesting in pg3 here: https://www.hamburgpromedia.com/hpm-downloads/documentation/VirtualMXF-Workflow_Guide.pdf
[Walter Soyka] “There’s a lot of other functionality in the pro version beyond FCPXML support, so I wouldn’t immediately assume they’re held up by a major update”
I would, heh heh. They made extensive use of fcp7 XML for MXFImport, and I don’t think fcpxml is up to snuff for what was happening before, but again it’s a guess from being familiar with their other products.
Jeremy
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[Walter Soyka] “You could end up having to mount an awful lot of virtual disks.
Will transcoding to optimized media still be ideal?
“I do this pretty regularly since i store all my field shoot cards as disk images.
On one particularly long group of interviews with multiple cameras – I think I had regularly had 12-15 disk images mounted simultaneously while sorting through footage. Didn’t seem to bother X a bit.
I’m currently in planning/prep for a 16-24 camera shoot of a jazz performance for next month. With multiple cameras over multiple songs that could go into 32-48 mounted virtual disk images if I want to work with all the content “live to mix.”
The projects shoots a week after I get back from NAB and edits the second week in May. I’ll let you know how it works out – but to date, multiple virtual disks mounted via the finder seem to work seamlessly under Lion and X in my limited experience.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Yep, I hear that, but with fcpx’s consolidation and transcode tools, it seems you should be able to pull this in to an event by drag and drop. The virtualization might just be the first step.”
I think we’re saying the same thing. This is going to be a really useful workflow. Congrats to Hamburg Pro Media on the release!
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Hey, Bill.
I hear what you’re saying, but this is different.
Your disk images store media, these virtualizations store links to all the disparate MXF media.
From what I can gather, these virtualizations collect all the necessary parts (just like any NLE that uses MXF) and then presents it in a way FCPX and the OS can understand.
What cant be done through the now defunct qt API has to be done this way, or at least this is a way it can be done until AVFoundation is allowed grow up, if ever.
Can’t wait to check this out.
Jeremy
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And I never thought 7 was perfect either.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “The MXFImport component works like this in QT and fcp7 now. Using the QT framework, the component simply presented the information to the OS. It’s very slick. “
[Walter Soyka] “That’s a bit different than MXFImport, which was a QuickTime component and could actually work within the QuickTime framework. Since AV Foundation doesn’t support QuickTime components, I think they are going deeper, Inception-style, and virtualizing the media in a QuickTime wrapper, on-the-fly, on a virtual disk that must be mounted. “
May be you know that, but for those who doesn’t: if you have “MXF Import”, there’s an option to create QT Reference files in a specified folder or in the same folder the mxf file lies in. That happens almost on-the-fly: you need to “access” the file to initiate the process of creating references. That is either open it, or preview with quicklook. Or if you have a folder full of MXF files, the first time you open that folder finder builds thumbnails, thus “accessing” them. After that you have a bunch of MOV files which FCP X understands. Not so neat as VirtualMXF seems to be, but an option anyway.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t read or merge Avid mxf. XDCAM works.
This can be activated in CalibratedQMXFOptions on the auto-ref tab.
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