Digitizing XDCAM Footage

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Thomas,
If you are happy with your workflow, why do you listen a reseller?
You edit, they sell.
I edit the XDCAM footage in FC without problem. I let Proress for rendering and exporting.

Mac OX 10.5.2-FC 6.02-QT 7.4.1
G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM-BlackMagic Extreme
PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM-AJA ioHD
JVC DTV-17″
SONY EX-1 . SONY PD170
..and always a big mess on top of the table.

[Mark Raudonis]

I’ve been using XDCAM, both SD and HD for quite some time now on several seasons of reality TV shows, and I too think it’s a great format. The only thing I can think of that holds any credence is that FCP does NOT handle the XDCAM low rez proxies. FCP can NOT edit with them, like Avid can.

Since FCP can not edit the automatically created proxies from the sony disc (Like AVID can), we had to digitize the material “real time” using an AJA box to create the off-line RT media. This is a shame, ’cause it really defeats the whole purpose of simultaneous proxies…. but it’s what we had to do. That was then. Now that we’re in HD, we’ve added a ton of storage and we just “throw it all in the bucket”. This has enabled us to bypass the “off-line to on-line” step and just stay all high rez, all the time. For this, we ALWAYS use FAM tranfers. It’s faster than realtime, and infinitely easier to manage compared to “realtime” transfers.

As for the “friendly codec”… FCP now handles the XDCAM native codec, and that’s how we edit.We may do the final color and GRFX pass at uncompressed, but not the off-line stage, so I don’t know what he’s talking about.

I really wish that FCP would figure out a way to handle the Sony proxies… that would make my life much easier.

Mark

[Thomas Hughes]

Thanks guys, much appreciated!

[Andy Mees]

Everything Mark said, with bells on. Couldn’t agree more.
The codec is great. The full res native workflow with ProRes render is great, FCP cuts native XDCAM HD with ease.
The only issue is if you choose to deliver in a XDCAM HD too (or any other GOP based codec), thats when you’d hit the whole “conforming” bump in the road … but thats your choice, you don’t have to go that route.

An integrated low-res workflow would be great, AVID can do it, EDIUS can do it and not surprisingly, Sony’s own VEGAS can do it. It doesn’t seem likely that FCP will ever offer such a workflow so I wouldn’t hold your breath on that one … but Sony could easily allow third parties to enable such a workflow if they opened up their XDCAM Transfer software to allow import of logging lists, wish they would.

[Mark Raudonis]

[Andy Mees] “but Sony could easily allow third parties to enable such a workflow if they opened up their XDCAM Transfer software to allow import of logging lists, wish they would.
“

Let me just add that we use “Pilotware” (www.pilotware.com) for all of our logging and it can read and handle the XDCAM proxies just fine. So our “import” process is really a two step scenario where the proxies are sent to one place and the “full rez” go to our media folder on the X-SAN. This way, we really are taking advantage of the built in proxies for logging and story notes, but it’s a shame that we can’t edit with them on FCP.

Mark

[Andy Mees]

Hi Mark

I’ve found the proxies cut pretty easily in an OfflineRT HD timeline … the only proviso is that you need to batch remove the unwanted extra audio tracks

to deal with the extra unwanted audio tracks you can download the FREE Audio Track Batcher from https://www.davidheidelberger.com/software.html

its an extra step but a quick and simple one … certainly worth looking at if proxy editing is something you could really use.

cheers
Andy

[Tim Allison]

Are you using a system with Leopard installed on your Mac? I’ve heard that the decks and the drives don’t mount quite right in FAM mode when using Leopard.

[Eric Peters]

I had also encountered the problem of the discs not mounting properly after we upgraded all of our systems to Leopard over the weekend. Sony has recently released version 2.5.1 of their XDCam Transfer software which has fixed the problem which I had been seeing in version 2.1.0.

[Scott Sniffen]

With regard to Xdacm transfer, when importing with the Sony Transfer interface, how can I rename each sub-clip? I enter an in and out, change the “clip” name and when I import and then go back to FCP, all the clips have the same name as the first clip but each with a 1, 2 , 3, etc. Examp: Talking Head, Talking head 1. I must not be changing the right logging entry but it does take the info inputted for the first sub-clip. It seems I am not changing the sub-clip name and just the clip name. Thoughts?

Scott

[Andy Mees]

sadly Scott, Sony are drip feeding us with the obvious features one might want or need.
as it stands, the current release does not support naming of subclips …. nor does it allow adding, naming or renaming of essence marks, nor importing or exporting of logging data nor many other desirable features …

that said, it does what it does well, and is an actively evolving app, so for now you just have to work around the functions that don’t yet operate as you’d like (given the introduction of continuous clip recording in their higher end cameras and decks, it seems likely that the need to name subclips will become more obvious to the back room boys who do the coding)

cheers
Andy