Can’t get MXF files into Avid Media Composer

[Michael Phillips]

Have you tried just copying those to the Avid MediaFiles folder already on your hard drive? Copy the MXF files into Avid MediaFiles/MXF/1

Launch MC, open MediaTool and drag from window into bin.

Michael

Michael Phillips

[Mark Baird]

Copying won’t actually work nor will AMA work. There is a very specific way you have to deal with the field packs. I am assuming you have a field pack reader connected to your editor and you are working from the original field packs? If not… If the footage from the packs has been copied to another disk drive that’s a whole other problem. Let me know and I can go into that. One important thing is the field pack has to be LOCAL to the editor… you cannot do this over a network share.

Now that said, once the field pack is in the reader and your computer recognizes it go into MC and create a bin for your new files. Right click in the bin and select “import”. Now you want to change the “file types” drop down to select “CamCutter files (*.bin, *.spl)”. Once this is selected navigate to the “bin” folder on the field pack and select the clips.bin file. This will open all the clips on the field pack into your bin.

You can work this way, but if you need to clear the field pack off for other shooting then you need to consolidate the files from the field pack over to your local or shared storage.

Hope this helps.

Mark Baird
ACSR (MC, Unity, Interplay)

[Mark Baird]

and after more closely reading your post. If the clips.bin file is actually corrupt, then you need to fix it.

It has been a while since I delt with this but there may be a way to fix the clips.bin file using a utility from NLTek called Paktools. (try it in evaluation mode to see if it works. you don’t want to buy it if you can help it. )

If that doesn’t do it my experience has been that the tech support guys over at NLTek will bend over backwards to help you out. But you are on the right track with brining in the clips.bin file. that is how you import from a field pack.

MB

[Brian Vedholm]

Didn’t work, unfortunately. Thanks anyhow.

Brian

[Brian Vedholm]

Thanks for your help trying to solve this problem.

The files are no longer on fieldpacks. They’ve been copied to an external harddrive and used in FinalCutPro7, linked with third party software. However, the uncertain future of FCP made me want to switch to AVID assuming the footage is readable in AVID. I don’t think the clips.bin file is corrupt apart from having been copied from the originally fieldpack to another drive, since I get the same error message with all my material copied from fieldpacks.

Btw, I’m not on a network share. It’s a local machine with an external drive attached.

Brian

[Mark Baird]

Okay, this is the thing about fieldpack data once it has been copied to another hard drive. When you are trying to import it into your system, the three folders from the field pack have to be in the root directory of the drive.

So if you did what 99.9% of us do and you made a directory on your hard drive called “my shoot on xxxx” and then copied the field pack into it, it won’t work. try moving the three folders from inside that directory back out to the root of the drive and try it that way.

I should note here that I have never done this on a mac. All my experience comes from the PC side but I know on the PC. those three folders must be in the root for it to work.

MB

[Brian Vedholm]

Think you’re right. That must be the way to do it. Going to try that. Thanks.

Brian

[Mark Baird]

An additional interesting experience to report. Today I was testing out a “resurrected” field pack and I had to hit “file/refresh media directorys” and “file/load media databases” after mounting the Field pack and starting MC. Not sure if there is an analogue if you are using a hard drive but I thought I would mention it. Before I did that, MC acted like there was a problem with clips.bin.

Also, If anyone is having problems with 160 GIG field packs with spinning disks dying on you, we are working on a fix. (we have had six out of our 12 spinning disk field packs die in the last 12 months. (or if you just want a cheep way to a solid state field pack.) You can open up the pack and remove the 160 gig drive in it and replace that drive with a 128 gig or a 256 gig SSD. I use “crucial’ brand drives and we are seeing very good results in early stages of testing. So if I was wanting a solid state field pack that could record 3 hours and 48 minutes of footage. I’d be very tempted to buy a 160 gig spinning disk based field pack and a 256 gig crucial drive and just open the pack and put in the new SSD. You get out cheaper then if you buy a SSD based field pack and you have a spare 160 Hitachi drive for your laptop.

This is working well for me, but as always YMMV.

MB

[Brian Vedholm]

Hi MB,

Tried refresh/load…, didn’t make any difference as to import of footage. Suddenly, however, I was able to link to a few of the MXF clips in the Avid MediaFiles folder on my external drive using “Link to AMA files”. Looks fine on the video, but no audio. Tried to import more clips from the same folder, but most of the time I get an error message “Floating point exception in thread “MainThread”, at adress 0x0″ and the software crashes. Managed to link to 3 clips, video only. Doesn’t make much sence to me…

Thanks for info about fieldpacks. Mine are working fine so far. But nice to know.

Brian

[Brown Maty]

Hi, Brian.

I have met the similiar trouble. Have you find a way to solve it?

In the forum, I found the reply ” https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1161458 “, which gave me a lot of help. You can have a try.

Signature： Are you Canon EOS C300 users? If so, do you want to get the MXF recordings to FCP 6/7 for further editing?