P2 .MXF’s question yet again…

[Tim Parsons]

HAHA! I suppose you may be right. But I don’t know avid, nor can our studio afford it. FCP 7 did a pretty good job on most fronts, even with their transcoding of P2. But Adobe is where we headed, and now we need to make it work to fit our needs.

[Tom Daigon]

I understand, Im in the same boat. But the set up and timing for my response was to good to resist. 😀

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.6.8
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digital / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3

[Tim Parsons]

[Tom Daigon] “the set up and timing for my response was to good to resist.”

Agreed. Virtual high-five… Nice!

[Alex Udell]

Tim…you can touch the the original metadata…

just not with PPro..and that metadata does not make the file name editable, but there is a username field within…

Alex

[Tim Parsons]

Ok you lost me… Please elaborate.

[Alex Udell]

take a gander thru this:

https://www.dvxuser.com/jason/P2-Name-article/

and then this:

https://pro-av.panasonic.net/en/sales_o/p2/p2viewer/index.html

Alex

[Tim Parsons]

Thanks for the links, Alex. Unfortunately, thanks to workplace network restrictions, I can’t get to them. I will have to look at them some time though.

[Alex Udell]

ok…

definitely read this one:

https://www.dvxuser.com/jason/P2-Name-article/

Alex Udell
Editing, Motion Graphics, and Visual FX

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

There is just such a utility: P2CMS, which was made by Panasonic. It does most (if not all) of what you’re looking for: It lets you view and selectively import MXFs, and perhaps rename them too.

Using the Program isn’t the most straight forward… I get the feeling it was badly translated from Japanese, but it does work.

The reason that you can’t simply rename P2 MXFs is because of the complex structure.

Every time you hit record, the camera creates 7 files with the same name. So that’s bad enough.
Also, however, the name of the file is also stored in several places in the xml file.

But then, the moment you hit 4GB, you create 7 more files that have a new name but are part of the same clip. And then in the xml file you get a few references to the name of these new files, AND of the first file. (and the xml of the first file gets a reference to the name of the second file)

So to rename a P2 MXF clip you’d need to rename every reference to that name, which could number into the 20s on even relatively short clips.

[Tim Parsons]

OK, I’ll look into P2CMS. Thanks.

But your response brought up a very interesting problem I just started running into… When I import (for example) clips 1-5 into Premiere, it will import 4 instances of clip one and then clip 5. Is this because of the 4 Gb limit?

I expect that it is… Why then does premiere not simply import the fully composited Clip 1 once? Why does it import 4 Clip 1’s?

Let me show you what I mean…

I import multiple files…

And Premiere imports some files multiple times. Yes, at least one of all replaced files are 4Gb.

But why doesn’t Premiere just import one composited clip instead of 4??