Editing XVAC-S Footage in FCP X

tidasaha,

Thank you for the helpful response. Yes, I knew that XVAC-S is MP4 format and long GOP. I was just not sure that you could even ingest it into FCP X. Since this format is now used on two Sony 4K cameras (the FDR-AX1 and the FDR-AX100 to be introduced in late March) I am hopeful that Apple will support this format in FCP X. Since it is a long GOP format, it is going to take some cpu horsepower to play it back in FCP X, bu one would think that the new Mac Pro 12-core could certainly handle that.

Thank you also for the link to the HDMediaConverter which will transocde XVAC-S to Pro Res. Transcoding may well be necesary to handle the XVAC-S format even on the new 12-core Mac Pro.

All of this is reminiscent of some ten years ago when the HDV long GOP HD format was introduced by Sony and very few NLE's could intitially support that format and it took powerful computers (for that time) to work with HDV. That all changed very quickly within a year of the introduction of HDV. We seem to be seeing the same situation with 4K today.

Tom

simonespadaro,

I believe the XVAC codec is presently supported by FCP X. It is an intraframe codec. At present XVAC-S, a long GOP interframe codec, does not appear to be supported by FCP X, although I do not know that from personal experience. Apple does not respond on these forums and no one here knows or at cleast can say when, if ever, XVAC-S will be natively supported by FCP X.

I think we are on the cutting edge of 4K at the moment and will have to wait a few months to see how all of this settles out.

Tom

I would like to thank all those who responded to my question on ingesting XVAC-S video into FinalCut Pro 10.1. I followed up on Stockholm's link, and it appears that FCP 10.1 does support ingestion of XVAC-S and that this was added only in FCP 10.1. I look forward to receiving the Sony FDR-AX100 in late March or early April, and I'll post back here my own results with teh XVAC-S format shot by this 4K camcorder when I have had a chance to try it.

Tom

Martin,

I expect to receive the Sony FDR-AX100 4K camcorder before the end of this month, and I shall immediately begin trying to import and edit footage from this camcorder in FCP 10.1. My intention is to try to import the native XVAC-S fooage directly into FCP 10.1 and see (1) if FCP 10.1 will import the native footage and (2) how my fully maxxed out late 2013 Mac Pro handles the footage in a real world editing situaiton. If FCP 10.1 will not import the native footage, then I shall convert it to Pro Res and see how well that works. I am very hopeful that no trancoding of the XVAC-S footage will be necessary to edit it in FCP 10.1. The XVAC-S codec is at present only on one available Sony camcorder, the FDR-AX1, and that camera only became available in late September of last year. In any case, when I have received the AX100 and have had time to try editing its footage, I shall certainly report the results here as I think there is going to be a lot of interest in the AX100.

Tom

I recieved my Sony FDR-AX100 camcorder yesterday, andI spent the afternoon capturing some 4K footage in the XVAC S format used by this camera. I had no problems ingesting the footage into Final Cut Pro 10.1, creating a timeline, applying stabilization, effects, etc. to the clips and playing the footage back in real time on my new Mac Pro. I do not yet have a 4K monitor so I was only able to view the 4K footage on my Apple thunderbolt display and via HDMI out from the Mac Pro on a Samsung 2K TV in my editing suite. Playback of the tmeline in Highest Qualtiy mode was flawless with no dropped frames. There is not any way in FCP 10.1 to export the edited XVAC S footage in native format as far as I have been able to determine, and even if there were, I don't know of any device that would play back the edited footage to a a 4K TV.

You can hook up the Sony FDR-AX100 via the supplied mini HDMI to HDMI cable to a home theater receiver and play back the footage in 2K or 4K (if the TV or projector supports 4K) directly from the camera. I tried this and it worked perfectly with my Sony VPL-VW95ES projector and Sony receiver.

Finally, over on the AVS forum others have reported being able to play back the XVAC S footage on two year old Macbook Pros, so a new Mac Pro is not necessary to play back this codec. However, even with color correction, stabilization, and filters addedd to my 4K timeline on the new Mac Pro, it did not even break a sweat palying back the footage in real time with no dropped frames.

Tom

The Sony FDR-AX100 records 4K (UltraHD footage) in the MPEG-4 format, hence the file extension .mp4 on your recorded files. The XVAC S codec that the camera uses for 4K records a highly compressed long GOP h.264 file (same as .mp4). To record uncompressed 4K footage would require processor speeds and card storage requirements beyond what is currently available. The XVAC S codec is a modification of Sony's XVAC codec used in their expensive professional cameras. The long GOP (GOP = Group Of Pictures) is a type of compression in which the full information on a scene is contained in only one frame of every so many frames that the camera records. (A similar compression scheme was used in HDV camcorders when HD recording first became available for consumers.) In between these frames only the difference from one frame to the next is being recorded. This allows for capturing the huge amount of information in UltraHD footage in an efficient manner and also allowed Sony to use SD cards for storage as opposed to the much more expensive cards used in their professional camcorders.

You are not doing anything wrong if your intention is to capture 4K and that is the format that you have selected in the menus of the FDR-AX100. From your description that sounds like what you are doing and so I would say enjoy your camera and no, you are not doing anything wrong.

Tom