FCP/Compressor to MXF or ProRes 444 to MXF?

[Bill Stengel]

Hello!
I shot something recently that, in addition to H.264 for Vimeo, the client wants a second file delivered in MXF format for their in-house archive. I edited in FCP-X, and haven't had any luck in finding a way to transcode to MXF even outside the FCP-X ecosystem (including Compressor 4). Everything that comes up is transcoding from MXF to ProRes etc.
Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions on how to get this done?

Thanks!

 

[Craig Parkes]

Hello!
I shot something recently that, in addition to H.264 for Vimeo, the client wants a second file delivered in MXF format for their in-house archive. I edited in FCP-X, and haven't had any luck in finding a way to transcode to MXF even outside the FCP-X ecosystem (including Compressor 4). Everything that comes up is transcoding from MXF to ProRes etc.
Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions on how to get this done?

Thanks!

MXF is wrapper, not a codec - you should actually be able rewrap PRORES into MXF files with Avid I believe, without transcoding, although I am not sure which version of AVID is required to rewrap PRORES 444

 

[Bill Stengel]

MXF is wrapper, not a codec - you should actually be able rewrap PRORES into MXF files with Avid I believe, without transcoding, although I am not sure which version of AVID is required to rewrap PRORES 444

Thanks Craig.
I'm not as clear on the nuts and bolts of the back end of things as I should be. It doesn't necessarily have to be a 444. It could be 422HQ, but I'd like it to be as high quality as possible. I don't have access to an Avid system, unfortunately. Any thoughts on how I might be able to get this sorted?

 

[Craig Parkes]

Avid has a 30 day free trial, so just downloading it and googling the workflow would be your best bet. Other than find someone with an Avid system, or ask if you can supply a Quicktime instead and they will rewrap to MXF at their end, I am not actually certain. There are bound to be lots of other workflows for this with standalone software, but cost/convenience/workflow wise I'd wager the most likely the reason that the other person wants MXF wrapped fils is because they are also on Avid - so getting the job done with Avid in the first place is probably the best bet.

 

[jake blackstone]

When in doubt, just use Resolve Lite, which is free. It can read and write pretty much anything, including MXF.

 

[Michael Romano]

When in doubt, just use Resolve Lite, which is free. It can read and write pretty much anything, including MXF.

Thats the ticket. Select MXF DNxHD at the highest available setting for archival purposes. The audio should show up with as many files as you have tracks of audio.

 

[Craig Parkes]

Resolve can certainly render out what you want, and is a very good suggestion, although one slight cautionary thing I'd say is it's still a render, not a rewrap of the original quicktime - so there is room for quality loss/mistakes to be made in re-rendering (by mistakes I mean user errors in terms of bit depth and settings, not any issue with Resolve itself.).

Rewrapping the master Prores to MXF is the lossless solution - of course, if the other person is using Avid as I suspect, if they know what they are doing they should be able to do it at their end.

 

[Michael Romano]

R
Rewrapping the master Prores to MXF is the lossless solution - of course, if the other person is using Avid as I suspect, if they know what they are doing they should be able to do it at their end.

True, a re wrap is best but I'm pretty certain they're asking for DNxHD on this. To avoid a generational loss, create the DNxHD MXF (possibly limited to DNXHD in an mov wrapper) right from FCPX. the avid codecs LE (as in free) gives DNXHD support to any QuickTime enabled application. That way you skip the master ProRes when creating the deliverable for their archive. Craig does make a great point, avoid the last generation if you can.