MXF for TV broadcaster question

Dear all

The shortfilm I have finished last year (and on which I have credited the fcp.co community for the amazing help received) has so far 29 festival selection but most importantly, I have sol it to a Dutch national broadcaster, hourra.

So they have asked me for an HD MXF file. It is the first time I have to deal with this format. I've tried a test in Compressor and basically I have 3 questions:

• My film is in 4K (4096x2160) with some black bars up and down (2:35), but if I choose the HD Copmressor preset, it makes it 1920*1080 which is actually distorting the image. What is the standard way to get a properly scaled image, apart from creating a new timeline and cropping ?
• Should I export AVC-50, AVC-10, or Prores 422 Uncompressed (in the latter case the file is huge)
• I see there are 8 channels in an MXF, does that mean I can (and should) include both the 5.1 and the 2.0 audio ?

Thank you all for your answers.
Manu

You need to get their specs in writing. All broadcasters have that spelled out very clearly.

In Compressor, you can adjust how aspect ratio is handled. The first place to look is in the Inspector, for the preset applied to your job, in the Video section, "Padding", set to either 16x9 or "Preserve Source..." I'm doing a Send To Compressor with the same sized 4K footage, and it's working pretty well. If I set Padding to Academy 1.8:1, yeah, it squashes and distorts. But at 16x9, it seems fine.

As for audio channel assignment, I'd get that in writing from the broadcaster. I always get delivery specs in writing, and clear up questions, before I do any test encoding at all. Those are monster headaches I don't want to bother with ever again.

Thanks Ben

I have asked for more specs indeed. Thanks for the explaination about handling the Padding, I would not have figured that out.

Hey Manu,

If you get the official specs sheet and you still have any questions or doubts, drop me an e-mail.

- Ronny

Thanks Ronny !

whenever you’re ready, this might help:

Create a multi-channel MXF file with Final Cut Pro X and Compressor
support.apple.com/HT204261

Thanks ! I figured it out.