XDCAM HD Question

[Roli Rivelino]

Sorry in advance if my answer is stupid, but I recently ingested XDCAM footage for the first time myself and once I downloaded the software I had no problems (up until colouring but that’s another story!).

When you say you right clicked, do you mean you right clicked the actual files and imported them? I found that once I downloaded the plugin a new import option popped up in my FCP file menu and it just seemed to do everything automatically and the res was fine with lots of really big files.

Have a search under my name and XDCAM/EX footage and you’ll see the answers given to me by the more experienced members of COW.

Hope this helps.

aka Newbie Wan Kenewbie. “The young Newbie, is now a Padawon.”

System
Mac Pro 2.8Gb quad core
8Gb RAM
1x 320Gb 7200 hardrive
1x 1Tb 7200 hardrive
Nvidia Geforce 8800 512mb Graphics card
1x 1Tb external WD ‘My Book’ eSata

Equipment
Panasonic AG-HVX 200
Firestore FS-100

[Mark Maness]

[Glyn Bowerman] “When they come in, although they were filmed @ highest quality 50mbps, FCP converts them to around 7.1mbps…why is this and is this normal? “

What you are seeing is two different numbers… XDCAM HD 422 records at 50 mbits/second, it imports into FCP as 7.1 mbytes/second. There’s a difference in bits and bytes. There’s a bunch of math here and I’m sure you really don’t want to know the full explanation… but the numbers you are seeing are correct.

[Glyn Bowerman] “I’m on a really steep learning curve here chaps & its a bit daunting not knowing the best way to approach it. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

PS. I have an AJA Io HD as well, so have read that ProRes is the way to go..but its a minefield of conflicting information! “

Let me ask you this, what is your primary format for your edit? Is it mostly or all XDCAM HD? If so, use the Sony Software Transfer to import all of your media and set FCP to render your XDCAM HD renders to ProRes 422. You can do this in your User Prefs. I would suggest that you edit in XDCAM HD, unless you have lots of graphics. In that case, I would batch capture my footage into ProRes 422 or even DVCProHD.

Let me give you a little tip here. If you need to edit in ProRes 422 or some other codec, for whatever reason, import your XDCAM HD footage, log it, then take the media offline and batch capture into another codec. This will save time, instead of looking at all the media like we do on tape.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com

[Glyn Bowerman]

Thanks Wayne

Yes the project is being filmed entirely in XDCAM HD. So when I drag a file onto the timeline & FCP asks would i like to match the clip settings, I click Yes, then go to User Preferences/Render Control, then change the codec to Apple ProRes 422 ?

Thanks for the other tip, I have never batch captured before so will look into it.