Support for Canon MXF from xf100 in FCP X?

Hey Blake,

I've been using the Pika utility for while and am so glad it works. So here's the steps you need to go through:

1) Use the Canon xf utility to view your files on your cf card. Then make a backup of these files to a folder on your harddrive. There's an option that says something like "backup card" that you click to do this in the dropdown menu.

2) Once you have backed-up the video files. Open the Pika utility and for the "master folder", select just the "folder"that you backed up the files to at the top, not the individual files. At the bottom, for destination folder, select a folder you want the new .mov files to be exported to.

3) The card number of the files you backed up should show up on the left column. Choose it and click on the button in the center of the utility -"move to process cards list".

4) then choose this same card number on the right column and click the "1 2 3 go" button. The utlity will now process the files and you should see the different file names changing at the center as they go through the process. Once its done, go to Fcpx and import the new files from your destination folder. voila!

let me know if this works for you or if you have any questions.

Andre

Thankyou foxdawgs, I am out of town for the next few days but I will give it a go when I get back. Thanks a bunch.

I noticed on Pika's site that his utility is not intended to convert footage shot in 60i.

why did I shoot in 60i?

'cuz it was there (and it's the highest setting).

now I'm struggling to bring in 1980x1080 60i footage.

for the sake of expediency I'm guessing my best bet is to find someone running an older version of FCP to ingest the footage and hand off .mov files.

would everyone agree?

anybody near DC wanna make a few bucks?

Mitch

I had absolutely no problems converting 60i footage from the XF100 using Pika's utility. The only thing I had to do was go into the video properties page and reverse the field order.

that's good news.

I'll contact Pika again with my issues... (unless someone else can help me).

I've gone through the install process, but in XfcpX it doesn't recognize the .mxf files (they're grayed out), so no files get populated in the lefthand column.

I understand that ffmpegX is at the heart of this process... I've been using that (among others) for compressing.

Mitch

Interlaced is the debil! 🙂

The field order trick mentioned above should work - I need to update my site.

also, forget the left hand column - it's of no use and will be removed in next iteration - perhaps with better support for interlaced video to work out of the box.

Simply do this:

1) Use XF Utility to "Backup card"

2) Point XfcpX "Master Folder" to the Backup folder in XFUtility (Not the individual cards or anything, just the root of the backup folder you set up in XF utility

3) Select your cards in the RIGHT side pane and hit 123Go

Oh!

by selecting "...Canon/XFUtility" as the "Master Folder" a series of numbers ("the card") then appeared in the righthand window and became available to process.

YES!

I think I got it.

thanks a million.

Mitch

For Yostopia

I have tried Pikas converter on 50i footage and although it looks a bit raggy on the PC, after exporting a Movie from FCPX it seems to be OK.

I am curious as to your comment about reversing the field order in the "Video Properties" page.

Can you please tell me where you found this page as I would like to see if it helps 50i footage as well?

Cheers.

1) Select Event

2) Select Clip within Event that you want to reverse field order

3) When clip is selected, you'll see three top-level sections in the Info pane (Video, Audio, Info).

4) Click on Info. You will see a Field Dominance Override control. It offers four options, and to flip field order dominance I just selected "Upper First" because the converter created it in Lower First dominance order.

Enjoyed your weekend test of the two program. But no mention of the importing problem. Did you have no problem importing the files?

I've read to the end of all the posts and concluded that Canon/Adobe/Apple haven't fixed anything yet?

The Pika thing sounds like a good solution to try. I just wanted to add I bought PavTube Video Converter, and after separating all the MXF files out of their folders, time consuming, and dragging them to Pavtube, I can convert them to MPEG2 files that work well with no loss of quality in Premiere Elements 9, of all things. Conversion of 70 video files can take 90 minutes, but at least I am able to edit a video. I have an iMac. See pavtube.com

Not that I want to bash the Pavtube tool - but AFAIK it is indeed CONVERTING the video. Either way you put it, that will mean a loss of quality. The pika tool does not touch the original mpeg 422 stream in any way - it does not get any more lossless than that.

And it's free ;-)

70 files in 90 mins says nothing, other than the fact that you *may* have very short clips ;-)

Each to his own - use whatever suit your needs.

Thanks. I didn't realize Pavtube converts--so I would be throwing away the quality I paid $3,000 for. I did download your software, but I don't own Final Cut Pro X at this minute. So I need to make the Premiere Pro/Final Cut Pro X call right away, given that Adobe's 50-percent off offer ends tomorrow.

I will phrase the amount of clips I had a different way. It was about 490 gigs in 90 minutes.

I have no idea what suits my needs. I bought a camera, discovered I couldn't import, and have been in battle ever since. Thanks for your information.

Well, the resulting mpeg from my tool should work just fine in Premiere Pro as well. How it performs, I have no clue about - I don't own it ;-)

Perhaps someone else here can chip in ?

I have your software easily installed on my iMac with no problems. All I need is the editing program.

The claim from PP and from others here is that PP doesn't need any conversion at all. It just sees the Canon XF100 files and gobbles them up like a good boy. I enjoyed the comments on your Web site about the misery all the XF100/XF105 owners face.