If all you have is the MP4 – A Solution

[Craig Seeman]

Just did a test where I took XDCAM EX MP4, encoded to MPEG2 Transport Stream at 35000kbit/s. Took that source into Episode Pro 5 and used it to Encode to XDCAM EX 1080p30. I then took that file and dropped it into XDCAM EX 1080p30 timeline in FCP 6.0.3 and it worked!

[Yves Groenen]

Hi Craig read about ffmpeg before but thought it wouldn’t do the trick. I’m going to try it tomorrow (gotta go in a sec) And if it’s working damn man I’m gonna send you a nice Belgian beer 😉

greets and thanks a lot

[Yves Groenen]

damn can’t wait to get my hands on it tomorrow :-d

greets

[Craig Seeman]

It really really really works!

If you don’t have Episode Pro 5 you might have to render the ffmpegz in your timeline in FCP but you can certainly create a high data rate file in ffmpegz. Episode Pro 5 actually allows one to encode to XCDCAM EX (all flavors) MOV which works in FCP but Episode Pro can’t handle the MP4 source.

In any case ffmpegz can handle XDCAM EX MP4 source and both the audio and video came through.

[Michael Slowe]

Craig, at present I shoot in SP (HDV) and push it through Convergent Design’s HD-Connect and edit in HD with Media 100 (won’t for the time being support EX files). Do you think that your new magic idea would result in better picture quality bearing in mind your warning of some quality loss?

Michael Slowe

[Craig Seeman]

It may well depend on whether your material benefits from being shot at 35mbps VBR vs 25mbps CBR. There may be little difference for talking heads but it might be significant for sports or images that change from frame to frame such as rippling water or billowing leaves.

[Andy Mees]

Hey Craig

You might want to have a gander at this possible solution posted by an FCO user on the Apple Discussions forum … I don’t play with EX1’s myself but it sounds worth a go, and pretty nifty if it works

https://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7128012&#7128012

Cheers
Andy

[Craig Seeman]

I’m also thinking through a similar type solution that may work. I’ll test and report. It MIGHT be even easier then the method they suggest.

[Craig Seeman]

While I didn’t follow the linked method Andy points to I did attempt what might be Sony’s procedure and it failed.

Failed procedure:
Use Import function in Sony Clip Browser (Intel Mac). In Sony Clip Browser Manual it says you can do this with “unregistered” MP4 clips. It creates a BPAV folder with metadata. Such folder shows in XDCAM Transfer tool 2.5.1 as containing 0 clips.

[Craig Seeman]

Contacted Sony.

Clip Browser SHOULD allow you to import an MP4 file an create a BPAV folder. It apparently doesn’t correctly create the XML and other metadata. They discovered this last week so they told me.

There will be a Clip Browser 1.5 that should fix this. When that happens you’ll be able to import MP4, create new BPAV folder, rewrap to MOV using the XDCAM Transfer Tool (Mac).