FCP 10.4 crashing with XDCAM sd cards

[Josh Kaye-carr]

The latest version of XDCAM Transfer I found on the Sony site is 2.12 and it will not run under Sierra/High Sierra. Catalyst Browse will allow an import, but as soon as I ask FCPX to import anything, it crashes. Sigh……

[Graham Read]

Hi Josh,
I’m using XDCAM Browser V2.1 (2.1.0.248) on both a Sierra MacPro and a clean install Retina MacBook Pro with High Sierra and both work for me including being able to export to FCPx although I don’t use that facility.

[Dan Svoboda]

Yes I get the same message when trying to install from Sonys website, but I copied the app from another machine and it works.

Can you transcode the files in compressor? or MPEG Streamclip?

[Graham Read]

Hi again Josh.

I’m starting to see a pattern here which may help.

1 – Before FCP 10.4 I never had these problems
2 – The crashing problem only happens with FCP 10.4 and High Sierra combination.
3 – The crash only happens if there are camera clips that are longer than 4GB – because the BPAV folder structure of EX-1/EX-3 cameras use FAT32 format so the camera “seamlessly” subdivides them into 4GB clips and most editing software apps hide this complexity and present long clips as just a single long clip instead of the _01, _02 that is there if you browse the folder structure in Finder.
4 – FCP 10.4 does not crash in High Sierra if the media card only has short clips.
5 – FCP 10.4 has lost the ability to interpret correctly the BPAV folder structure.
6 – If recording really long clips that are larger than one camera card, the camera spans to another card – This is unworkable in FCP 10.4 even on Sierra as at least one 4GB mp4 sub clip will not appear in the import browser and therefore not be importable. This is infuriating.

My workaround: I now use Adobe Media Encoder to transcode my long form XDCAM EX files to ProRes then import into FCP 10.4 – reminiscent of FCP 7.0 10 years ago with XDCAM Transfer! Can also use Sony XDCAM Browser to Export to FCP 10.4 but Browser is discontinued so doesn’t fully support FCPx since introduction of Libraries. You can however export to a folder and then import from there into FCPx.

Advice to Sony BPAV camera users – Don’t upgrade main edit system to High Sierra – If I knew about this I would have not upgraded to FCP 10.4 either – colour tools are good but it’s screwed my workflow.

Please everybody experiencing this file a bug report from within FCP 10.4 then maybe it will get fixed!

[Mark Slocombe]

Good summary Graham… your point

4 – FCP 10.4 does not crash in High Sierra if the media card only has short clips.

explains why things worked out for me as per my last post – was using short clips only

Mark Slocombe
https://www.creationvideo.com
London, England

[Geoff Addis]

Likewise for me – only tried using short clips.

[Josh Kaye-carr]

Hi Graham….thanks for your detailed message. Here’s what I have:

1 – Agreed, same with me. This all started after 10.4
2 – Happens on my 2 machines one of which runs Sierra, the other runs High Sierra.
3 – It doesn’t seem to matter how big the file is, or at least I never get far enough to find out since FCPX crashes immediately on SxS card insertion. If I copy the BPAV folder over to the RAID, it crashes on import command, so I can’t import anything, BPAV or otherwise.
4 – Doesn’t matter, short or long, it crashes on card insertion or upon program launch if a card is already in the reader.
5 – Ugh.
6 – Infuriating doesn’t begin to cover it. I’m about ready to jump ship and go to Avid or Adobe.

I wish I could use your workaround, but since FCPX crashes on import, there doesn’t seem to be any way to get ANYTHING into the editor.

Sigh……………

[Graham Read]

Hi Josh,
Sorry to hear you are crashing in Sierra too. I’ve certainly not had that.
Try the XDCAM Browser way – you can get it from the Sony website.
1 Use the browser to navigate to either a camera card or a HD copy.
2 Right click on one or more thumbnails and select the 2nd option “Import into Final Cut Pro”
3 Select Execute on the next dialogue and the default is to create a folder in you Movies folder
4 Once that’s done it gives you the option to import into a Library and will launch FCP if it’s not already open.
5 You could either quit FCP, eject SxS card, launch FCP then import from the new Movies folder file or just try to eject the card before FCP finishes launching. (assuming is still crashes)

The crucial difference is that this method re-wraps the file into a regular MPEG2 MOV and doesn’t create the BPAV structure so it should import fine.

[Dan Svoboda]

I just did a test and it seems that Edit Ready works with these files fine,

[Timothy W coursen]

Based on the discussion I successfully employed another, somewhat cumbersome, work-around to the FCP 10.4/High Sierra/XDCAM upload problem:

1. Copy the large linked-clip XDCAM video file onto a drive.

2. Create a series of new folders corresponding to each of the linked video clips from within the SD card (find them in a sub folder named CLPR).

3. Within each of the individual newly created clip folders create a nested series of sub-folders matching the XDCAM file structure (private>SONY>BPAV>CLPR).

4. From inside the original BPAV folder (see step 1) duplicate the files into each of the newly created BPAV folders (CUEUP.XML, General, MEDIAPRO.XML, TAKR).

5. Individually copy each of the linked video clip folders (from the original CLPR folder) into their own new separated folder. The video clip folder should include all of the additional contents (the MP4 video file, and .SMI, .PPN, .XML, .BIN files).

Since they don’t exceed the 4GB limit, Final Cut Pro 10.4 will import them as separate video clips that you can link back together again in the edit timeline.