XDCAM HD transfer software from Sony with FCP 5.04?

[Andkin]

Are you actually getting a menu option to import XDCAM from within FCP? That was the bit that was added to 5.1.1. The Sony utility can work without FCP open at all and you can bring the footage it copies right into FCP like you would any other Quicktime. Is this what you are doing?

Apple have announced that the other bitrates (18 and 35) will be supported for FAM mode import in the next upgrade, due in a month or so. All we need now is the ability to import and edit with the proxies, be able to modify the metadata right on the camera disk and have it flow into FCP, and allow for an import recompression if you don’t want to offline with native resolution files and the proxies are too small.

ak

[Mark Maness]

My wish is…

I want to be able to select which audio tracks I want to import. At the moment, you have to import all eight tracks of audio, even if you have only two tracks of actual audio. This makes editing tough when you contantly have to delete six tracks of audio that you don’t need.

Oh yeah… Has anybody here exported out a sequence to your machine, yet? If so, have you noticed that if you have two guests and one if on channel one and the other is on channel two – you cannot mix them to center when you export using Sony’s transfer Software.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com

[Dave Jenkins]

Yes the menu is there in 5.04.

[andkin] “Are you actually getting a menu option to import XDCAM from within FCP?”

[Andkin]

Interesting. We never bothered to see if that would work. We got the cross-grade to 5.1.1. and started testing and eventually editing. If you are on-lining at XDCAMHD and the footage is coming in all right and you have no other problems, you should be OK. If you are doing an off-line to be conformed elsewhere I would make sure all the reel and TC info matches what’s on the disk.
Last question, does the Import tool recognize what project you are in? It’s in the lower right side of the window.

[Dave Jenkins] “Yes the menu is there in 5.04.”

[andkin] “Are you actually getting a menu option to import XDCAM from within FCP?”

[Dave Jenkins]

[andkin] “Last question, does the Import tool recognize what project you are in? It’s in the lower right side of the window”

Yes it does but it sometimes brings in two clips from the same media file. They are the same but only one is selectable.

[Andkin]

We had that problem once or twice in the beginning in 5.1.1 too. Took a trashing of Preferences and a re-install of the Sony utility to make it go away. There are prefs you could try to reset for the Utility as well.
Glad it’s working for you though. As long as you have tested everything you should be alright. That’s not to say that there’s no reason to upgrade to 5.1.1 and when the 5.2.1 upgrade comes down you might not have access to some of the fixes that come with it.

[Dave Jenkins]

thanks for the info. I have 5.1 on cross grade order but my client bumped the XDCAM edit up by a week.

[Dave Jenkins]

one more question? Is there a way to stop the XDCAM transfer software from importing the proxy files?

[Andkin]

I don’t know of a way to stop it as a setting but if you have the activity window open you can cancel all the tasks that are running in it. I found keeping the activity window open was good for preventing importing twice because of the lag between hitting import and it actually starting. We’re keeping the proxies on a windows junker so anyone can look at them, even after the disks have gone into storage between off-line and on-line. Hasn’t come up that often yet but it’s there just in case.

[Dave Jenkins]

Cool thanks, one more question. Can you down convert the HD files to DV with the transfer software or is there a setting in the camera that will do this?

Thanks again.