XDCAM driver description

[Ian Cook]

Wow. Are you sure you were able to reconstruct the whole clip and not just import the Proxy? If so, I had no Idea Edius could do this. Other NLEs will generally only pick up the Proxy. I will try this on our Edius box..

[Joe Valenti]

Hello Ian,

I’m having a different issue with XDCam that I haven’t seen. Footage shot on a PDW700 came back without MXF files inside the Clip Folder, just .xml files. I also don’t see a component folder. I’ve tried log and transfer, avid ama, clip browser, xd cam browser…no dice! The only program that can read the file is Edius 6.02. Is this structure correct? Is it the camera’s firmware that needs updating? The footage came back on a harddrive. I do not have the discs.

Many Thanks!

Joe

[Ian Cook]

Hi Joe,

It sounds like you have a USB/Proxy disc image. These are created in the following scenarios:

1) The camera is set up for simultaneous USB recording to an attached thumb drive

2) Clips are copied from the camera to an attached USB thumb drive

3) A backup disc image is exported from the PDZ-1 software. (People sometimes think that this function creates a full ‘clone’ of the disc– it does not.)

The point of a disc image with everything but the hi-res files is portability (1 hour of proxy video = approx 1 GB). This enables you to import the disc into the PDZ-1 software and log/edit the metadata and then write that metadata back to the master disc at a later time. You can also import the proxy disc image into (for example) Avid Media Composer or Sony Vegas Pro and then conform the proxy clips to full resolution when you have access to the master disc.

I’m guessing that neither of these correspond to your workflow and that what you need is a copy of the master disc with the full-res video files. Hopefully this isn’t a problem for you to get. But the image you have isn’t broken or the product of a malfunction; it’s just not the image you need.

Have them copy the entire disc using Windows or Mac OS or a file copy utility. This will create a copy with the full res clips.

The ‘component’ folder is optional and only appears when the disc is formatted on certain machines. Its purpose is to store audio-only MXF files created when using the live voice over function on the portable decks. What you should see from a 700 is Clip, Sub, edit, General and User Data. You may see a “Pro AV folder,” which can be optionally hidden as it contains all the raw, non-interleaved MXF data. You do not need to copy this folder unless you are using Avid and want to edit proxy video with high-res audio. You’ll notice that if you copy a disc with 30 GB of clips and include the ProAV folder you end up with 60 GB of copied data–this is because you end up copying both the self-contained MXF files and the raw audio and video files (i.e. copying all the contents twice). Again, you do not need to copy this folder unless you are working in Avid and want to import the low-res video with high-res audio.

Hope this is helpful..

Ian

[Chris Fenton]

I am having a similar problem and cannot seem to get to the bottom of it. We have a U1 drive with latest firmware (version 2.450) On Macs and Windows 7 this works perfectly but on Windows XP I always get the wrong folder structure.

I have tried the U1 drivers v2.3, v3.0 and 3.1 but cannot get the correct folder structure so I never get the clip folder.

Unfortunately our main edit systems needs to run on XP so I have to copy the files down from another computer onto an external drive and then import which is not very convenient.

I am wondering whether there is a conflict with firmware version 2.450 and Windows XP. Can anyone tell me whether they are successfully running this configuration? or is there a way to roll back the firmware to an earlier version to try that?

Many thanks
Chris