MXF footage from a C300

Hey Everyone,

So I just did a shoot with a c300, that shoots in mxf. Since I am a little limited on space at the moment, is there anyway for fcpx 10.0.6 to just reference the MXF media rather than injest into the final cut event, effectively doubling hard drive space usage?

From memory the only way to import the footage from the C300 is to use the plugin and open camera archive. Though I haven't done it since 10.06.

If it's still this way then I would suggest having two copies of your footage IS THE ABSOLUTE MINIMUM amount and if anything should go wrong with a drive then you will lose everything.

By yourself a cheap drive, copy your raw media to it and then import from there into FCP X. You have not doubled up on storage and your footage is a little safer from a disaster.

I found a solution though a bit weird. I simply dragged the footage from finder directly into fcpx 10.0.6. I then created a keyword collection one at a time for each batch, so I know which card they came from.

I have backup the footage to multiple drives. I just dont like the fact that fcpx seems to force recopying the footage into the final cut events folder, even though the program natively can handle mxf footage now. Its a crazy waste of space and if I need to transfer the event in a rush or send it to others, the event wont be so large.

Are you saying that 10.0.6 can import Canon MXF footage without a plugin now? I have 10.0.3 and still on Lion cause I thought that the Canon MXF plugin didnt work on ML. I'd like to upgrade to ML as well as 10.0.6

I think we have to wait until Canon updates their plugin. They said October when Mountain Lion came out, so my guess is they will bring out a new one that will drop the re-wrapping to Quicktime.

That said on any import of footage you will have to make the decision if to either leave the original at their current position or to have FCP make an independent copy to your Event.
When you say you want to copy your Event in a hurry and would have just used references (leaving the original where it is), you would also need to copy the original footage folder together! with your event. Because the reference file points to a specific location on your drive(s) it is most likely that after copying to a different drive the references will not work anymore..

Here is what I do: I copy the original content from the cards to a drive. Coming back to the edit I back up this drive to LTO-4. Then I import the footage into FCP letting it make an independent copy into the Event folder. After this I can reuse the drive deleting the originals.
All footage now lives in the Event folder. After finishing the project I backup the Event folder to LTO-4 again as the long term Archive if I ever need this footage for editing again.
My Event folder is on a Raid-0 drive for speed. I do backup every night the Event database to a second drive. Should the Raid-0 die I can restore all by taking the Event database file and re-importing the footage from the LTO-4 original media archive again.

I feel extremely safe this way and I avoid buying hard drive after hard drive. LTO-4 or 5 is really the only cost effective long term storage of file based media (opposed to tape based). The initial investment is a bit high ($5000 when I bought) but the only safe way if you want to be sure.

Hope this all makes sense

Happy editing
Carsten

castnerrm wrote: Are you saying that 10.0.6 can import Canon MXF footage without a plugin now? I have 10.0.3 and still on Lion cause I thought that the Canon MXF plugin didnt work on ML. I'd like to upgrade to ML as well as 10.0.6

Yep! and it works perfectly well. Plug in your card and FCP will be able to import your footage without footage. Just don't forget to create a Camera Archive.

I don't why, but the Canon plugin broke with every FCP update, and since I installed ML I had to refer to either the XFCPX rewrapper or Premiere for import of my XF files. With 10.0.6 I'm happy like a pig in the mud. That new import window is also great.

HOLY CRAP! So I just skimmed through my xmf clips which I just dragged from my external drive, and I just realized that they are all cut off midway through the clips. So the native xmf file might be 30 seconds, the imported clip is now 8!

I have a major edit due and this is scaring me. I know for a fact importing the footage via the import window will work to resolve this, but there is some big issues.

1. the files are being renamed with the time and date of the files, rather than the file name!

2. The files are being reduplicated into my FCP event folder. This is effectively making two copies of the footage. I know there is a benefit to this idea but I will explain why i need it not to be this way. For one, alot of times I need to give the original folder with all the footage back to the client. This would be hell to take all this footage from a FCPX event folder rather than my already organized mother folder on my source hard drive folder of the footage. Also sometimes i need to send my event file to my coworker who has the same backup of raw footage. If the FCPX event is a 100 gigs, I can't send it over the web to him.

I need help! The only solution i have found for this is to cancel the full import of the mxf files after going through the import window. However this is producing files in the event viewer with a camera symbol over them. What does that mean? You can see a picture of the symbol below.

solution for 2: have a look at this blog post: www.pauljoy.com/2012/10/editing-canon-mx...without-transcoding/

I haven't tried it but it sounds promising.

solution for 1: select the clip(s) with the wrong name and go to the info tab, select the wheel at the bottom right and choose to rename to original (don't have the software open and can't remember the exact name)


happy editing

You said drag and drop from a Finder window into an FCP X Event?
What are your Import settings in FCP X's Preferences?
I bet you can un-check the Copy To Event option there.