IMX four channels audio export

[T. Payton]

Ahh I got it. I didn’t understand that the IMX Spec is only for SD material, see here (the FCP 7 manual coincidently):

https://documentation.apple.com/en/finalcutpro/professionalformatsandworkflows/index.html#chapter=4%26section=1

And from the FCP X Glossary “IMX A standard-definition (SD), all-I-frame MPEG-2 format stored on tape, XDCAM optical disc, or disk drive. Some IMX decks can play back and convert formats such as Digital Betacam, Betacam SX, and Betacam SP to IMX. The data rate of IMX can be set to 30, 40, or 50 Mbps.”

Therefore you have to create a SD project at NTSC 720×486 or PAL 720×576 (or anamorphic versions of those) to SEE it as an export option. If you start with a HD project, you should make it a compound clip and then paste it into an SD project to see down convert.

So correct me if I am wrong but it looks to me that FCP X already does all you need it to do by selecting roles in Share > Export.

And the resulting file with 4 tracks of audio just as specified.

This is in fact what you were trying to do, correct?

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[Jeremy Garchow]

Correct, IMX is SD only. The equivalent in HD is XDCam.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[T. Payton] “This is in fact what you were trying to do, correct?”

That’s it, T Payton, has to be SD Project first (or SD compound clip in Event).

Good find.

Now if we could can get this in MXF direct from the timeline! 😉

Jeremy

[T. Payton]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Now if we could can get this in MXF direct from the timeline! ;)”

Correct me if I am wrong, but is that what I showed?

(Sorry to be redundant, I just want to be clear) Here is my timeline with roles:

The export settings:

And the results:

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[Jeremy Garchow]

[T. Payton] “Correct me if I am wrong, but is that what I showed? “

It’s an IMX.mov, but an IMX.MXF would be great (or p2 MXF, or other flavors of MXF).

With FCP Legend, you can export straight to IMX or XDCam with Sony’s free XDCam Transfer software for FCP7 right out of the Export menu like this:

and results in this:

Can’t quite do that with FCP X, yet.

I’m sure it’ll get there eventually.

Jeremy

[T. Payton]

[Jeremy Garchow] “FCP Legend”

😉

[Jeremy Garchow] “It’s an IMX.mov, but an IMX.MXF would be great “

So what is the difference between the .mov and the .mxf (besides of course the extension)?

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[Jeremy Garchow]

[T. Payton] “So what is the difference between the .mov and the .mxf (besides of course the extension)?”

MXF is a container, like .mov. It can house all kinds of frame rates/sizes and codecs, most of which can be proprietary codecs like ProRes or AVC-Intra.

It stands for Material eXchange Format. It was quite literally designed to hold and exchange modern file based media by SMPTE.

The MXF container itself is open, which means you aren’t bound by any one developer or manufacturer provided you also have an open codec. MXF is used extensively in broadcast post/archive workflows, many modern broadcast tapeless cameras shoot to an MXF wrapper.

It is platform agnostic and makes sense for modern file based workflows. QuickTime is dying, not so much the container, but the API behind it. This means that NLEs will be restricted to decoding .mov material in an old and creaky 32bit structure. MXF skirts this as it’s a more modern architecture, and also has cool capabilities such as built in metadata structures.

For all of its faults, QuickTime has been ubiquitous and user friendly, I feel that should change for a few reasons and hopefully MXF should get better attention.

MXF is not perfect, but the more that it catches on in post workflows, the more development resources can be thrown at it. Avid uses MXF as its underlying media container, but avid does it’s best to over complicate it and hide those underpinnings from the user as much as possible.

I am curious to see what happens with FCPX and MXF and the MacOS in general. With Mountain Lion, AVCHD Transport Stream file structures are now directly available to the OS for viewing. It’d be cool if we could get this same functionality with MXF files.

Wikipedia has good info and this is a good read if you like this sort of thing: https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/techreview/trev_291-devlin.pdf

Jeremy

[T. Payton]

Jeremy,

Thanks for the information, that is great to know. So have you posted some feedback to Apple about this workflow? I just sent them a note about the IMX export options being very difficult to discover, so the more information they have the better.

https://www.apple.com/feedback/finalcutpro.html

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[Jeremy Garchow]

[T. Payton] “Thanks for the information, that is great to know. So have you posted some feedback to Apple about this workflow?”

I have been rattling the cage for better MXF support in FCP for a very long time. Panasonic and Sony have done a decent job of supporting their flavors of MXF for FCP, but better support would be…better. 😉 And there’s more to MXF than P2 and XDCam.

I have third party tools from MXF4mac to help me in FCP Legend, and it appears they are developing a few for FCPX as well, but some of them aren’t available yet.

Also, Apple has announced better native MXF support, so I will be curious to see what this brings before rattling the cage any further. I have high hopes!

Jeremy

[T. Payton]

Oh I missed that one on the new announced features! I frankly never even knew what MXF was and dismissed it. Thanks for the education. 😉

——
T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque