Sony XDCAM, XAVC flavors and FCPX compatibility?

[Chris Schwarze]

Hi Ian
No, I am recording the new format XAVC-L long format on the X70. Very long takes. A message appears in the software saying that spanned clips (XAVC?) are not supported.

regards
Chris

[Ian Cook]

Are you sure you are recording XAVC and not AVCHD? XAVC should only span from card to card since the media gets formatted exFAT (which does not have the Fat32 file size limitation).

[Chris Schwarze]

Sorry, my mistake. I recorded AVCHD. The catalyst (v2.3.0) browse message reads ‘transcoding is not available for spanned AVCHD clips’

recorded to a single 64GB card, record duration 21min, cam sony X70

regards
Chris

[Ian Cook]

Copy the files over first using Browse. The error is misleading and I have asked the dev team to change the wording and give the user a little more direction. When you do a Copy, Browse creates a concatenated (joined/self-contained) .m2ts file. This can be transcoded to any supported output format.

[Ryan Kavanagh]

I just started using the Sony A7s, which also uses XAVC format. I installed the plugin from Sony (PDZK-LT2_1.2.1) and I started trying to bring the files. I also saw some third party workflow where you convert everything to quicktime using the “Sony XAVC Converter for Mac”, I hated this idea because I don’t want to waste more time and disk space than I have to. I used XDCam for a long time in the past and one of the things you can’t do with XDCam is mess with the folder structure the camera creates on the card. But one of the things I noticed when working with Canon 60D was that when I maintained the card structure FCPX thought that the folder, even when located on a hard drive, was a card in a camera and force itself to make “optimized media”. I’m not a fan of this because like I said I want to save disk space and time. So with the Canon I figured out that if I break the card’s folder structure by renaming the folders “xDICM” instead of “DICM”, nothing fancy, FCPX no longer thinks the folder is a card and I can “leave in place” the files instead of transcoding. I thought I’d give this a try with the card structure of the Sony A7s, and this actually worked great as far as I can tell. The files work fine in FCPX (10.1.3 and 10.1.4), and I don’t have to bother with transcoding anything. On the card there are lots of other folders and files, including an “.XML” file accompanying each “.MP4” file, but I just ignore (but maintain separately) all that and put the video (.MP4) files into a separate folder. I did it on my first project with the Sony A7s and it worked perfectly fine. If anyone knows of any unintended consequences this may cause I’d like to know. Also, does the F55 card have the same folder structure as the Sony A7s, since they are both XAVC? If they do maybe you should try what I’m doing.

[Jay Ernst]

ian
any update on when xavc long will be supported by fcpx
thanks

[John Grenz]

Also checking in to see any updates on XAVC Long working in FCPX? Really appreciate all the help and feedback Ian has been providing. Just hoping the native support in FCPX comes soon.

[Chris Schwarze]

Also waiting for FCPX to accept XAVC long.
In the meantime, I have looked for a workaround. Catalyst browse will encode to pro-res, but doesn’t keep the time code, which is a MAJOR problem for my workflow.
Unless I am doing something wrong….
Anybody have a plan B?

[Chris Church]

Hi guys,

Also awaiting some FCPX XAVC long GOP updates, are we any nearer to this. Massively frustrating when all other NLE’s seem to handle long GOP with ease and powerful edit software like FCX still can’t natively pull it in?

Any news or at least an update would be hugely appreciated. Browse does work but as Chris mentions above time code is still hugely important.

I know the Sony SXS MPEG 2 Long GOP with EX3 work fine with FCPX with the correct drivers installed so surprised me that’s it’s taking so long for Sony to get the XAVC L to work natively.

Also on another note for those using FCPX is it just me or even with thunderbolt eternal drives does anyone still have spinning wheel issues? Be interested to know, using early 2014 MacBook Pro, better performance is on, background render off etc. 10.1.4 installed, Everything starts off fine then gets sticky.

Cheers

Chris

[Young Monica]

Fortunately for users of FCP, Apple have released an update to the Pro Video Formats available in Quicktime. However, according to users feedback, it currently looks like the support is meaningless. Users still can not transfer XAVC files into FCP for further editing smoothly.