P2 MXF Import Tip

The tip was published by a user on the German finalcutprofi.de.

Importing P2 MXF files still wraps the needed files (video, audio, metadata) into a .mov wrapper and copies the files to the library. This is both lengthy and space consuming. It doesn't matter whether the prefs are set to leave files in place or not. This setting will be ignored.

Here what he suggested and what does work:

The steps only make sense if have chosen: leave file in place.

Open the camera card copy. Navigate to CONTENTS and open. Navigate to VIDEO. Then drag the the whole VIDEO folder to your event. After a second all files with all video, audio and metadata appear as a referenced file.

- Andreas

Very useful information, Andreas!

It's strange that now that FCPX supports native import of MXF files, it still forces you to rewrap the P2 files into MOV (which implies duplicating all the media).

I guess this is done for security reasons, to impose organization and workflow on people that doesn't normally backup the original cards and work directly with them (which is a crazy workflow).

The problem is that most of us manually back up any tapeless media before ingesting it. So this tip is very useful to avoid duplicating the media one more time!

I find it curious that FCPX imports correctly all the files (video, audio, metadata) when you only drag the files inside the video folder. This wouldn't be the case in Avid for example (you would end up with just the MXF video files, without any audio, unless you drag the audio files afterwards).

I wonder if by importing the media using this alternate method you might run into any relinking problems later on, or have inconsistencies when sending your project to another app via FCPXML.