Sony F5 XAVC footage in Premiere CS6

[Tero Ahlfors]

I don’t know if there’s support for that codec yet in Adobe apps. It does work in Sony Vegas (well according to them). It’s Windows only though.

[Chris Paul]

Went to a Sony demo- the rep said that Premiere 6.5 will support it. In the meantime the free version of Blackmagic DaVinci resolve will convert it.

Chris Paul
POV

[Scott Foreman]

A few notes on the XAVC workflow, because I am stuck as well.

:: DaVinci lite only exports 23.97 or 24, so if you record video at 30 or 60, your output will be out of sync.

:: Sony’s content browser does not export, anyone with knowledge to the contrary, please please do enlighten us all.

:: Premiere Pro 6.5 does not support this codec.

Anyone who has successfully shot with the Sony F5 or F55 and transcoded the native XAVC files to ProRes 422, PLEASE tell us how you did it.

[John Gurney]

Impossible to do at this point on a mac as far as I know. We received our F55 last week and did a test with XAVC. Crashes PP6.02 and Media Encoder. Sony told us that we had to wait till PP7 comes out to use it. We had a commercial to shoot this week so we had to put the camera in XDCAM mode in order to use the files. The only benefit of this was the ability to shoot S-GAMUT. Even at XDCAM level, the footage looks wonderful! Can’t wait till we can use XAVC.

[Don Mcvey]

Thanks John. I actually went ahead and shot the XAVC. Realised I could use DaVinci Resolve to convert the files to prores. Pain in the @rse but the XAVC looks stunning! I mean gorgeous! I’ll post resulting video up here for you to look at 🙂

Just a thought… would Sony Vegas not handle XAVC???

[Jay Davis]

I am using Resolve to quickly convert the files from XAVC to ProRes or DNx. Then moving to editorial. I find the trans-code necessary because not all editorial departments are using “up to date” version’s of their NLE. So using these flavors I know they at least can open the files and move on. I then re-conform the edit back in Resolve linking to the 4k XAVC files and do final grade and finishing.
I agree that the XAVC looks really nice. For a very lightweight file it holds up surprisingly well. And on a simple DIT laptop station you can render out dailies fast. I would consider this a nice flavor to work on TV projects and shoot UltraHD.

BTW, you need to use the Resolve version above 9.1 and above to support the XAVC native.

[Don Mcvey]

Thanks for the advice!

Actually tried Resolve but my iMac kept crashing! So I eventually used Avid AMA to convert the files to Prores, then just edited in Pr. I was only shooting 1080p so that worked fine 🙂

[Jay Davis]

Yea Resolve works best when you have a dedicated GPU on board for processing so if your imac is older it probably will struggle. Without at least one extra GPU it can be cranky.

[Michael Ricci]

You’re in CS6? Trying to flip to ProRes? You don’t need content browser as CS6 reads and plays .mxf. If you’d rather have a .mov, do the following.

1) Import complete file structure to Media Encoder and export desired settings.
2) Import complete file structure into a Premiere project with sequence set for XDCAM 422 1080p30 and export to desired settings.

Hope I was understanding correctly.

[Don Mcvey]

Hi Michael,

Was trying to get prores or anything that would work with CS6. XAVC is not supported at all in Pr or Media Encoder. It just crashes. I know it’s .mxf but it’s a different kind of .mxf