Sony FS7 and XAVC-I Codec in Premiere

[Paul Colin]

Thanks Jon
I thought so I didn’t think it was transcoding the clips.
So it looks like we will just have to wait for Adobe to catch up to make the use of XAVC-I footage entirely enabled in Premiere.

[David Baud]

You may want to consider re-wrapping your XAVC footage instead of transcoding and see if your system can handle it better. The advantage of re-wrapping is that you keep the original camera compression, but you put it in a more standardized container like Quicktime (as far as Premiere Pro is concerned). Transcoding to ProRes will be certainly less demanding on your system, but it is time consuming and take much more space on your hard drive (4-5 times the original file size in my experience). Also in my workflow, I color grade in Resolve, and re-wrapping allowed me to resolve some issues with round-tripping…

For re-wrapping I use EditReady from Divergent Media… very good software and customer service (I don’t get any benefits for saying so;-)

Good luck,

David Baud
Post & VFX
KOSMOS PRODUCTIONS
Denver – Paris
http://www.kosmos-productions.com

[Paul Colin]

Hey David,
Excuse my inexperience but how does one rewrap the XAVC-I codec. I’m familiar with transcoding, but as you pointed out I don’t really want to do that (re: ProRes 422)
Please explain the rewrapping process.
Thanks!
Paul

[David Baud]

Paul,

I am not sure I understand your question… sorry if I am already talking about things that you know. A video file format is made up of a container (Quicktime, AVI, MXF, MTS,… etc) and a codec (MPEG-2, MPEG-4 (H.264 being a subset), ProRes, etc…) Camera manufacturers traditionally have their own file format (using their own container and optimizing the codec for recording their images). Sony for example uses MXF files on their latest digital cameras.

The idea of re-wrapping in post is to change the way the file format is written in the camera, to a more common container used in editing, like Quicktime (.mov). The codec still stays the same with your file: there is no transcoding but most Mac programs will be able to “understand” that .mov file.
Because MPEG-4 decoding can be computer process intensive, not all computer configurations will be equal as to read such file.

I believe Divergent Media has more information on their blog regarding this process.

I hope this helps a little;-)

David Baud
Post & VFX
KOSMOS PRODUCTIONS
Denver – Paris
http://www.kosmos-productions.com

[Paul Colin]

David,
Thank you for your thoughtful reply.
My question was not totally coherent. But it points to your statement “The idea of re-wrapping in post is to change the way the file format is written in the camera, to a more common container used in editing, like Quicktime (.mov).”
My question is: how does one change the way the file format is written (to.mov for example) in post? In other words what steps do I take to accomplish this?
Hope I have been clearer this time. Also thanks for the Divergent Media blog tip.
Best,
Paul

[David Baud]

Editready is the software I use to accomplish the re-wrapping.

David Baud
Post & VFX
KOSMOS PRODUCTIONS
Denver – Paris
http://www.kosmos-productions.com

[Tim Kolb]

The only caution with re-wrapping…the camera media containers are cross-platform and other containers may not be…at least with all payloads. It’s always a good idea to keep the original camera format files as a backup.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Video Producer at I-CAR

[Steve Connor]

I’m really hoping that the next PPro release will have better XAVC handling.

[David Roth weiss]

The developers are aware of the issues, which I understand are shared by those using Resolve. So, hopefully there will be a fix on its way sooner rather than later.

Meanwhile, I’m going to try rewrapping using EditReady, and I’ll report the results here afterward.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[Michael Buday]

Thank you everyone for the advice. Here’s where I am now at the moment, and take into account I’m on the latest version of OSX El Capitan, which may be having negative effects:

a) FCP-X: Works flawlessly with XAVC-I/MXF. Immediate and VERY fast import, no transcoding (as long as the Sony MXF plugin is installed). Everything is amazingly snappy and fast at 4K. My only issue is, I cannot get around the very different FCP-X workflow and don’t have time to learn it.

b) Premiere Pro CC 2015: Obviously some very weird problems with the UI on El Capitan and XAVC-I/MXF is unpredictable – sometimes snappy, other times sluggish, so abandoning Premiere for now.

c) Avid Media Composer/Symphony: XAVCI/MXF via AMA actually works fine. It’s a little less snappy then media transcoded to DNX, but it’s perfectly fine for editing – not seeing any playback hiccups or issues even with multiple effects stacked up. All other media from other formats was transcoded to a 4K/DNX format.

d) Resolve: Works fine natively in MXF, but the editing tools are too crude, so not a serious contender.

So, I’m moving forward with Avid and I start cutting today – so no turning back at this point 😉

FYI, I did try rewrapping MXF > MOV with EditReady and there was no difference with Premiere.

– Best,
Michael