Q: XDCAM EX Log & Transfer crashing

Download Preference Manager from Digital Rebellion (free)

http://www.digitalrebellion.com/prefman/

and use it to trash your preferences, which may have become corrupt. Preference Manger will allow you to archive your existing preferences should you want to restore them.

Deleting preferences is the usual first step when FCP begins to perform strangely.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1846

MtD

have you solved this problem yet?  i just sent an email to Sony for help with the same issue.

we've noticed a trend on our side.  we have two backups of the media.  it seems if i've looked at the footage in Premiere Pro CS5.5 and then try to view it in FCP 7's Log and Transfer, it crashes FCP.

when i go to the backup that has not been viewed in Premiere Pro, FCP can view the media fine.  it seems that PPro is changing the modified date of the XDCAM EX files, and i suspect FCP doesn't like that for whatever reason.

i've recently trashed preferences and that hasn't fixed the problem.  hopefully Sony gets back to me with some help soon.

Any more news on this?  We just got some footage (many BPAV folders of raw XDCAM files from an EX3) from an outside source that uses Adobe Premiere.  We are on Final Cut Pro 7, and have tried importing multiple BPAV folders using Log and Transfer.  Every time FCP crashes.  We have tried multiple computers, and I have even imported footage off our our EX1R to make sure that the XDCAM log and transfer plugin is working correctly.  All works well until we try to import these files from the Premiere shop. 

When I saw this post, I realized it could be a incompatibility issue between Premiere and FCP.  timrichardson27, any news from Sony?  how can we get around this?

thanks.

hi pbhillman.

Sony support was pretty worthless in my case.  the guy didn't read my emails thoroughly enough to realize what he suggested was stuff i'd already tried. he went on to say that the version of the plugin i'd installed for FCP didn't work with my version of the OS, though i'd mentioned success with that combination of plugin (PDZKLT1) with OS 10.6.8 and FCP 7.0.3 (as long as i hadn't previously accesed the BPAV with Premiere).

as long as i made sure the BPAV files i used with FCP hadn't been touched by Premiere, everything worked as expected.  we're not shooting with that camera any more, so i haven't had to deal with the issue since the end of 2011.

i certainly feel your frustration and wish you luck figuring it out.  maybe a support email to Sony wouldn't hurt, just to reiterate the problem.

Yea, film-maven, I tried the XDCAM Transfer utility too, and while it can also read files off the SxS cards from our EX1R just fine, it won't open the XDCAM files from the Premiere shop.  totally bizarre.

As far as a solution, the Premiere shop says they have a backup of raw files that have never been touched by Premiere, so we still have hope, but we'll see.  I'll try to follow up with Sony too, and post anything I might find, but I'm not holding my breath.  Thanks for following up.

FYI, we got a second set of raw EX3 files from the Premiere shop, that apparently weren't touched by Premiere.  Importing them via FCP 7 still crashed via Log and Transfer, but we were able to use the File/Import/XDCAM option, using the XDCAM Transfer application.  They came in as XDCAM, so we can figure out the footage we want to keep, and then transcode the good stuff to ProRes in a FCP timeline or via Compressor. 

You could also use the XDCAM footage in FCP and just render out in Pro Res, works for me.

DM

I googled and followed this article to deal with my BPAV videos. Hope it will help you.