XDCAM in Media Encoder

[Alex Udell]

Take a look at Proxy Mill from Imagine Products.
Looks like this is exactly what that is designed for.

imagineproducts(dot)com

Alex

[Eric Barker]

I don’t mean to sound harsh, but this is just not an option for what I’m doing. I am specifically looking for a way to do this within the Adobe suite. I’m setting up a system for a news team who are already upset at the amount of time spent and steps required to manage their XDCAM files. I’m currently having them rewrap them to MXF files, which would be perfect except for the fact that the rewrapping process creates some annoyances with the audio channels (creates 4 mono tracks from one stereo track, ???). I just can’t justify spending any more money, or throwing in any more software into the mix. If I can do it within CS5, I can probably talk them into it, but I’m afraid if I make any more changes, they’re going to go back to using DV tapes, and leave our $3000 HD cameras on the shelf.

Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com

[Jon Barrie]

Hi Eric,

Can you explain why you need standalone files?

Technically there already is a standalone file of each take in one of the folders. You will lose timecode and such but the video with audio file is there. From memory it’s an mp4 file.

– Jon Barrie

Jon Barrie
aJBprods
Jon’s YouTube Tutorial Page
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[Geoff Addis]

Eric,

Take a look at Edius for use by your news crews. Very quick with first class real time performance; you can download a trial copy from Grass valley. BBC news crews are using it here in the UK.

[Eric Barker]

Why would I not want standalone files? With BAPV structures, you can’t rename files at the OS level, organize them by content, etc. I want my newsteam to be able to find footage fast, long after it’s been shot and archived. The whole idea of “editting on the camera” as Adobe likes to tout is absurd, because we reuse SD cards over and over again for different shoots. We don’t have Edius or any other professional video server organization package, we’re using Windows and CS5, and up until now, we’ve been very happy with it that way. We shot on Firestore drives for many years, churning out AVI files and organizing them by project content. Now, suddenly, it’s as if the way we do things is completely foreign to everybody, but I can’t really imagine doing it any other way. When I’ve talked to other people about the way we do it, they always end up saying, “yeah, that makes a lot of sense”, yet, everyone’s going out of their way with these over-complicated backup systems that make it very difficult to navigate and reuse old footage.

Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com

[Eric Barker]

That’s way out of our price range. We’re in market 202 up in Fairbanks, Alaska. We can’t buy into a whole new system just because of a minor feature. You don’t know how much I’ve screamed and banged my head against the wall for a few simple organizational and encoding tools that really should be universal. No direction I look in is perfect, but rewrapping XDCAM structures to MXF files is far and away the most reasonable option for us.

Television Producer
KTVF-11 Fairbanks, Alaska
video.ericbarker.com

[Jeff Carrico]

I found this post when searching for exactly the same type of solution as the OP. This type of conversion is totally possible with just a little prep-work in Premiere. I’m using Adobe CC.

1. Using the Media Browser within Premiere, locate and import your video clips to a new project. (See also https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/importing-assets-tapeless-formats.html )

2. Right click on the imported clip and select “New Sequence From Clip”

3. Select the new Sequence and press Ctrl+M (or File>Export>Media).

4. Set export options and press the Queue button to send to Adobe Media Encoder.

This approach works with both XDCAM and AVCHD.

Cheers!