formatted OSX drive, filesalvaged MXF files, now FCP?

[Shane Ross]

Oohhhh…I see. Sorry, on the Apple forums I didn’t think you had recovered anything.

You ONLY have MXF files? NO structure at all? Wow…lemme see what I can play with on my end. I don’t have RAYLIGHT, but I have HDLOG, P2 Log’s bigger brother.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Jay Ingles]

thanks shane…appreciated.
At this point i have ~600 .mxf files in a folder. If i organize the files by filesize i can determine which ones are most important to me bc they are the largest (2-3.5gb). This is a starting ground as far as priority of clips.

I did a test iwth raylight on a small batch of files and it provided me QT’s but without audio (bettter than nothing). When i pointed raylight to the master dir with all the files it crashed.

Although i had tried to ‘train’ filesalvage to search for video ‘.mxf’ files and audio ‘.mxf’ files by providing example files it didn’t determine the difference. So i believe all the mxf files in teh folder are a mix of vid and audio ones.

Audio was recorded on separate data files as well so if i can isolate video (pref with TC, but if not ok) than i can survive.

thanks again.
/j

jay

[Shane Ross]

OK, HD Log will not import the P2 files without a proper P2 file structure. But MXF4QT imported the files just fine. And showed them as separate VIDEO and AUDIO files.

mxf_files.png

Now, do you have the video files only, named like 0083BL.MXF, or do you have the audio files too, with names like 0083BL01.MXF? If you have both you can marry them again in FCP by using the MERGE CLIPS option.

I’m sure that Calibrated will allow this as well. Heck, I bet if you install P2CMS that installs a QT component that allows you to open the MXF files in QT you could do this. But I have MXF4QT, so that is how I did it.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Jeremy Garchow]

[jay ingles] “-Where is the TimeCode info stored in MXF’s and is there any hope that i might be able to maintain QT’s with TC? “

Two places, really. MXF4mac uses the timecode information that is driven by the files that are in the ‘CLIP’ folder (which is the metadata XML). There is also timecode written in to the essence file of the video portion of the MXF files.

So when you recover the files, you don’t get the original file structure back? You don’t have a backup?

Yikes.

Jeremy

[Shane Ross]

Ahhhh, yes. I forgot about that. ALL of the metadata is stored in the CLIPS folder in XML files that are linked to the video…named 0083BL.XML and so on. So if you need your Timecode information you need those files as well. But then don’t they need to be in the proper file structure for that to work with MXF4QT too?

Wow, this mess is looking worse and worse. You can link the Audio and Video files via MERGE CLIPS, if you have both, but if you need timecode to link to the audio that was shot separately, this will be tricky.

Jeremy, have to deal with stuff like this much? I didn’t think about this because I haven’t been presented with problems remotely like this.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Shane Ross] “But then don’t they need to be in the proper file structure for that to work with MXF4QT too? “

Kinda. MXF Import doesn’t really care what the format of the clips are, but I would put all of your Audio in a CONTENTS > AUDIO folder, all video in a VIDEO folder (that is also in that same CONTENTS, this basically will create a dummy p2 card) and MXF Import should join the clips…maybe. It might also take the audio and video from the XML file as well. It’d be worth a shot, though. If not, you are stuck with merging clips and essence based tc which could be right or not.

Jeremy

[Jay Ingles]

Thanks jeremy.

The MXF files restored have been labelled 1.mxf, 2,mxf … 588.mxf etc. There is no separation or folder structure that exists. I dont know which are audio and which are video.

Any thoughts on deciphering the two? Be it open in a text editor, or anything.

If i sort that out i can use Raylight to batch convert the MXF videos so that at least i can have picture.

jay

[Shane Ross]

0083BL.MXF are the VIDEO files and 0083BL00.MXF, 0083BL01.MXF, 0083BL02.MXF, etc…are the AUDIO files.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Jeremy Garchow]

[jay ingles] “The MXF files restored have been labelled 1.mxf, 2,mxf … 588.mxf etc. There is no separation or folder structure that exists. I dont know which are audio and which are video. “

Yuck. Sorry, Jay this will soon be a night mare.

Usually the MXF files are named (for example) 001VY.MXF or something similar. The audio files for that video file would be 001VY00.MXF, 001VY01.MXF, , 001VY02.MXF, 001VY03.MXF. Perahps a different program will salvage the real file names?

Jeremy

[Jay Ingles]

THanks, i hadn’t realized the naming structure, but since i’ve lost the original file names i was hoping there might be a way to determine if the .mxf file is audio or video without having the “…BLXX.mxf” name.

possible? hopeless?

🙂

jay