EXCam Ex importing and INVALID DIRECTORY STRUCTURE

[Steven Gonzales]

I thought with XDCAM when you install the Sony plugin, then you use file menu — import — sony XDCAM, not log and transfer.

I read this a while back, though. I don’t have the plugin installed.

[Andy Mees]

Nathan

Its often been noted that the full XDCAM Transfer app offers far superior functionality to L&T and it certainly does integrate very well with FCP.
can you import without issue if and when you do use the XDCAM Transfer application as opposed to FCP’s L&T?

Andy

[Craig Seeman]

Curious if you have a clip that spanned across two SxS cards. Since you can only have one in the SxS reader I’m thinking maybe that’s it.

I never come in straight from a card though. I use ClipBrowser to copy to hard drive first. I usually use XDCAM Transfer but I have used FCP log and transfer from folder on hard drive and haven’t had this issue.

It may well be you have some minor corrupt metadata. If you but card back into camera does it give you a restore media message (which is generally a very safe thing to execute if you get that message).

[Ray Nygren]

I have been working with EX for almost a year and I run into all kinds of issues like this all the time with variations. Sometimes I get incomplete or blanks in the XDCAM trasfer then under windows clip browser it works Ok. and Vice Versa. Sometimes I neither works. This is why I have been working with the MP4 files directly with Adobe CS3 but the audio would be lost on import. In CS4 the native MP4 works fine.
Its interesting that Sony told be I have to use their tools and I was not aware of log and transfer without their freeware programs.
I also ran into issues using cineform but the latest beta has promised to resolve a few outstanding issues. This program requires the conversion on windows as there is only the codec on Mac currently. They do a MOV wrapper over a WMV that will work on windows and Mac. (The normal Mac MOV wont work at all on Win and vice versa)/ The cineform data is about 2X size but is identical to prores422HQ so I believe this is still the best editing solution for XDCAM EX in FCP

[Nathan Tinsley]

Thanks for the replies and now a few responses:

Regarding the sony clip browsing software I did do an Export to MXF for NLE. I dropped the MXF file into a folder on my media drive. When I tried to import this file directly into the bin from the media drive I got an error, something like, “invalid media type”. Ugh. Am I missing something? Andy what is it that you prefer about the Sony Clip Browser over L&T? And isn’t it re-wraping the MXF at that point? I thought bringing them in directly, or natively, would avoid that time consuming re-wrap but am I naive in assuming that FCP does NOT re-wrap in L&T?

The clip is NOT spanned over two cards.

Thanks,

nate

[Nathan Tinsley]

GOT IT! Well I’m just not that mac savy. When I ran the DMG to open the Sony Logging and Transfer utility I didn’t notice that I had only unziped the archive. I hadn’t actually run the installer. The IT guy helped with with that and now L&T works perfectly with the SxS card! Halleluia!