[Andy Mees]

audio compression … hope that makes as much sense (!)

seriously tho, you may not be able to post a still but you do need to explain the problem you are having and the solution you are seeking otherwise its all just words on a page with no meaning

[Andy Mees]

Nathan

Its often been noted that the full XDCAM Transfer app offers far superior functionality to L&T and it certainly does integrate very well with FCP.
can you import without issue if and when you do use the XDCAM Transfer application as opposed to FCP’s L&T?

Andy

[Andy Mees]

Robert,
If it suits your workflow then you can multiple select the separate items in the Browser window and then use the Modify menu > Merge Clips option to create a single merged clip item that you can then use in your edit …that might beget you where you’re heading
But if you are trying to simply group a number of items in a sequence together so that you can move them around as if they were a single grouped object well then I am afraid you are out of luck as FCP has no such command (mores the pity) … the closest you can get to that is by “nesting” the selection (Sequence menu > Nest Items) which will collapse the items into their own separate sequence and you then use that sub sequence as a virtual clip item within your master sequence. Works well enough but there’s no similarly easy way to ungroup or un-nest after the fact.
Bets
Andy

[Andy Mees]

Have you tried a Safe Boot yet? Restart holding down the Shift key … key it pressed till you see the spinning sprocket animation then leave the Mac for 20 minutes or more and see if it will eventually. (Safe boot up runs disk directory and integrity checks and tries to fix any errors). If it eventually boots up then log in and use Applications/Utilities/Disk Utilty to Repair Permissions. Then see if your Mac will reboot as normal. If the above Safe boot never does get it to boot up then go find your original OS X installer disk. Pop it in and restart holding the C key, it should start from the installer disk. When booted, go to the menubar and choose Disk Utility and run the Repair Disk and Repair Permissions routines. Then see if your Mac will reboot as normal.

In future, don’t mess with Sharing and Permissions … on your media drives the ONLY thing you might want to do is to just tick the “Ignore permissions” checkbox.

Hope this gets your system back up and running

[Andy Mees]

Tom

If you have just the m2ts files then FCP’s L&T won’t be able to import them because they lack the correct directory structure / supporting files
If they are AVCHD files then you can use Toast 9 very effectively for transcoding to another codec, much faster than Voltaic HD and you can set the target any supported codec on your system.
If they aren’t AVCHD … could they be HDV in MTS wrapping? Unlikely maybe, but you might want to check the https://www.ClipWrap.com demo and see if that does actually recognize them, if so it may be the best bet.

Cheers
Andy

[Andy Mees]

>It is still a bit weird why i have to do that

Not really Ling,

As noted, if you put mono audio in a stereo track then it will be interpreted as center panned. If you want track separation when dealing with stereo pairs then you have to use the pan controls. Ling, an alternative would be to change your sequence audio pairs to dual mono instead of stereo (Sequence Settings… >> Audio Output tab), then your mono audio tracks would not rely on the pan setting but rather on the audio output channel assignment.

Hope that explains it better.
Best
Andy

[Andy Mees]

you could do it with a a bit of xml magic, but it would probably take you longer to sort that out than to just do it manually
you could try a bit of GUI scripting though https://www.apple.com/applescript/uiscripting/
or how about a macro using QuickKeys or Bouke’s VideoMacro?

[Andy Mees]

Stefan

There are many things you can do in other NLE’s that cannot be done in FCP … and vice versa
The one you’ve identified would go a long way towards making FCP a better edit system for fast turn stuff, but that isn’t the primary target for this NLE (unlike Edius which sells very strongly in the fast turn market aka News).

Still, if you have QuickKeys or VideoMacro or a similar utility then you can set up the following macro that could be triggered from a single keypress in order to create the same functions:

To trim the tail:
press “control v” to make a cut at the playhead, then press “x” to mark the tail of the clip, then press “shift delete” to ripple delete the marked selection

To trim the head
press “control v” to make a cut at the playhead, then press the “back arrow” to jog the playhead back by one frame, then press “x” to mark the tail of the clip, then press “shift delete” to ripple delete

See how it works for you.
Cheers
Andy

[Andy Mees]

Ling,

When you import from XDCAM through file transfer then you are taking the clip (audio included) as shot and simply moving it to your hard drive.
In its basic format, depending on the kind of XDCAM camera you used and the format that you shot and your method of transfer you may have 2, 4, 6 or 8 channels of discrete mono audio. I suspect that what is happening is that your playback software, or the settings in your NLE are such that each channel of mono audio is being monitored as center panned stereo. For example, this is the default handling for discrete mono audio tracks in Quicktime Player.

Let us know what format of you are shooting and with what camera, how it is you are importing your XDCAM clips and into what platform and NLE, and what application you are then playing these clips back with and / or editing them. With that info it would be easy to address your problem more specifically.

Best wishes
Andy

[Andy Mees]

Hi Matty

Thanks for posting, and yes I fully agree. In fact your point is one I have made myself numerous times on the subject.
(Heres an example, not put quite so eloquently perhaps, but with the same basic concerns: https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/132/857171)

Nonetheless, I think that insomuch as the capacity to perform such a function exists in the one device and not the other, it stands as a fair distinction to make … especially when the original question was when trying to identify some of the pro’s and con’s of the two units. Still, your point’s well made. Personally, I use the MXO2’s 10 bit HD-SDI output to a BVM-20F1U but I do appreciate thats not an option for everybody!

Best
Andy