Best Workflow

[Pat Mcgowan]

Anyone from matrox or panasonic have a comment here? Seems pretty silly that pan releases a new format camera and Matrox drags their feet supporting it. What’s going to happen with the XDCAM?

[Mike Schrengohst]

Good questions!! I wanted to go AXIO but the Matrox rep at the show
I went to had a big question mark over his head when I asked
about P2. He was asking if I had a DVCPRO HD deck!! Yeah right!
I have a $21,000 deck sitting around next to my $65,000 VariCam – NOT!
Apple gets it and I went to the Apple show the next month and got
a demo with the HVX and P2 workflow. Most of my effects work is done
in After Effects anyway. For most editing FCP will work for me
as I do not edit with clients anymore anyway. (Lucky me!!)

[Barry Green]

[Eric Steinberg] ” I hope I’ve understood this correctly, but wouldn’t the streaming transfer just be video/audio without the mxf wrapper?”

Yes it is.

There are two different ways to get files out of the firewire jack of the HVX. There’s live streaming (which sends the data out in an AV/C-compatible data stream just like any camcorder or deck) and there’s file transfer (which uses SBP2 protocol to interface with computers and hard disks).

If the Axio supports firewire capture of HD data, then yes you could play your clips on the camera and have them stream into the Axio. That seems like a pretty limiting way to go though. As someone else pointed out, what do you do with footage that’s already been offloaded to hard disks?

One incredibly inconvenient workaround you could do is copy those files back onto the cards and play them through firewire, but that’s just silly.

The limitation is on Matrox’s side; they should certainly allow importing of MXF files especially if they’re charging $5,000 to $10,000 for their hardware.

Focus Enhancements sells a DV File Format Converter tool which can take DV files of just about any type and change them to any other type. It is anticipated that they’ll update that software so it can unwrap an MXF file and rewrap it as a .MOV.

On the PC, you can do this already with DVFilm Maker version 2.21 or later (although I don’t think it’s totally finished yet). Maker lets you import an MXF and it outputs a Quicktime .MOV, but it expects to be using the Avid DVCPRO-HD codec. I don’t know if that would work with the Axio or not. Try contacting Marcus and see if he has any plans to add Axio support to either Maker or RayLight.

RayLight is his other program for MXF/DVCPRO-HD; it gives you a custom DVCPRO-HD codec, and Raylight can unwrap MXF’s and rewrap as .AVI’s. Seems like it wouldn’t be that much work for him to make it support AXIO as well, but he’s a pretty busy guy so unless there are a lot of AXIO customers, I don’t know if he could/would fit it on his schedule.

But man, that Marcus van Bavel is one talented son of a gun. He engineered his own DVCPRO-HD codec just off the SMPTE specifications, and his is about 5x faster than the Avid codec!

—————–
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[Eric Steinberg]

Ok, I’m glad it’s possible to stream DVCPro HD footage from the camera to the Axio via firewire. I’m planning on buying the soon-to-be released 100Gb Firestore, which will hold 100 minutes of footage, and that is usually plenty for me since most of my projects are short (and eventually I’m sure the Axio will support mxf, although I have no idea how soon that might be). But one important question:

Is it possible to do this firewire streaming of DVCPro HD material into the Axio SD, or does it have to be the Axio HD?

I will only need to export my finished HD productions as files (wmv, QT, etc), so I don’t need the HD output capabilities of the Axio HD (I hope!!)

Kind regards,
Eric

[Ben Kupfer]

Barry, I didn’t realize you could copy the contents folder back onto the P2 cards. While it is limiting, it would be one way of getting all the info onto Axio without file conversion.

[Pat Mcgowan]

We shot with the P2 camera yesterday. We used a laptop to load the P2 cards using the PCMCIA slots and off-loaded the files, then recorded more and so on. At the end of the day we went back to the shop and reversed the process and sreamed the footage to our AXIO with firewire. Make sure you copy all of the folders, not just the MXF files in the video folder.

MATROX!!! Get this mxf stuff and firewire control of the P2 cameras sorted out soon!!! Please??????? We are begging!!!