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Avid MC and Sony EX3
Hi Everyone,
My company has recently purchased a Sony EX3. I am having trouble ironing out a clean workflow with our Avids. Can anyone offer some advice?
This is the problem I am consistently running into, regardless of how I treat the footage.
1. Stepping or jumping of fine lines on all down converted footage. I noticed this in areas of high contrast (edges around video monitors, highlights off of eye glasses, brick walls, etc..) This seems to be happening more than it should.
2. Movement on 60i footage appears jittery or compressedI should note upon reviewing the footage in HD right out of the camera everything appears clean. Also upon reviewing the footage down converted using the SDI output of the camera I see some stepping if letterboxed but none if 4:3 cropped.
I am running Avid MC 2.8 on a Mac PowerPC. Since I am unable to run the latest version of Sony’s XDCAM clip browser on our Macs, I am using a MacBook Pro Intel to unwrap.
My workflow is the following:
1. Using the MacBook Pro, load footage into the Clip Browser (V 2.0)
2. Export footage using Avid AAF. Point the MXF files to a destination on a 1TB External Drive, Point the Bin information to a seperate destination on the same TB drive
3. Eject drive and connect it to my PowerPC Mac
4. Drag the unwrapped MXF footage into my Avid Media Drives
5. Import the bin information into my project
6. Avid links up the bin info with the appropriate footageFor down conversion I have been simply opening my 1080 sequence in a 486 project and placing the HD sequence in my SD seq. Then I do any resizing as needed. For 4:3 cropped I have been using Pan and Scan.
Can anyone shed some light on my issue. I am sure there is an error in my workflow somewhere.
Thanks for your help
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2 Replies
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Your media conversion process is fine.
How are you monitoring? What monitor are you using? how is it connected? What hardware do you have? What playback quality is set in the timeline?
Media Composer projects are not resolution bound. A project can be both 1080 and 486 by simply switching in the format tab. All resolutions can reside in the same timeline. That said, Avid makes no claim of master quality downconverting. Official policy is to transcode the media to an SD resolution if the destination is SD.
Further. I would pay close attention to the detail settings in the camera. 0 isn’t necessarily a true zero point. I have seen claims that -40 is 0. Excessive processed crispiness in HD could easily lead to aliasing artifacts in SD.
Finally, it may be time to consider two upgrades. First, an Intel based Mac Pro. Unfortunately I don’t know about compatibility with the just released (last week) Mac Pros. The gains in processing power and access to newer software is tremendous. The latest version of MC (3.5) , I think a $300 upgrade. Lots of new features and tools for dealing with the various file based formats.
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Can Avid import and edit MP4 files from Sony PMW-EX3 natively?
You may have the need to import Sony PMW-EX3 MP4 recordings to Avid Media Composer for editing, can Avid split BPAV .MP4 files from Sony PMW-EX3? The answer is no. As Avid Media Composer best supported video format is DNXHD codec MOV format, it can’t supports BPAV .MP4 files from Sony PMW-EX3 natively. According our multi-testing, Avid doesn’t do Sony PMW-EX3 MP4 clips. You can’t edit Sony Cyber-shot MP4 clips natively in Avid Media Composer directly.
Since Avid Media Composer natively supported video format is Avid DNxHD, thus, you should transcode Sony PMW-EX3 MP4 to Avid DNxHD with this professional Mac MP4 to Avid DNxHD Converter. The MP4 to Avid Converter for Mac comes with an optimized format preset for Avid editing software, which enables users to convert Sony Cyber-shot MP4 to DNxHD MOV for using in Avid Media Composer directly.
Solution: Import Sony PMW-EX3 MP4 to Avid MC on Mac for easier editing
A relevant thread that talks about the Sony PMW-EX3 and Avid Media Composer Workflow. The mostly important is that it offers the detailed solution for you.
https://video-playback-tips.com/
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