Pro video blog…Produced by Philip Johnston DoP/Editor

lens

Although I have two 128G XQD cards for my FS7 (still waiting for another 2) recording XAVC I on 4K 50p is time limiting so I use LongGOP which almost doubles your card time. FCPX does not look at XAVC L footage so you have to bring it in using 3rd party software.

CatPrep

I took my 4K footage into Sony’s Catalyst Prepare expecting to transcode to ProRes 4K 50p to discover your maximum ProRes render preset is full HD !

CatPrep-2

Not to be outdone I hunted Catalyst and remembered FCPX takes XAVC I frame footage…the answer…till I discovered after about an hours transcoding 8 files that I was ending up with document files !!! Sony have been made aware of this but it does not stop here…

BM

As a back-up I have my Ultra Studio 4K running Media Express, now the latest firmware upgrade 10.3.7 brought 4k 50p…no problem I was covered. Sadly as I discovered it does not work, yet. Blackmagic told me they were aware of this and are updating the drivers this month to 10.4.7, so I hope I will have a solution to my problem.

GS

I am using 4K to cut in and out of during an interview, making it look like a 2 camera shoot, this saves using 2 cameras cutting down on production costs.

author

Having been working in the video business since 1988 I have amassed a great amount of knowledge of both the kit and production values over the last 30 years.

One thought on “Warning for Sony FS7 owners producing 4K 50p LongGOP footage on FCPX

  1. I think you will find these XAVC-L facts are quite well know around the post industry. Edius and I believe Prem Pro CC 2014 can now handle these files okay.

    I have been informed from a very reliable source high up in SCS that Vegas will have the XAVC-L support by months end. FCPX-L is not being handled by SCS due to conflicts of interest as both Sony and Apple both sell NLE software. That development appears to be under way in Japan between Apple and Sony japan direct.

    If you need an immediate XAVC-L to XAVC-I solution use Mainconcept’s TotalCode Studio. It has had XAVC-L support since May 2014. It supports XAVC Intra 4K CBG and XAVC Intra 4K VBR at both resolutions of 3840 x 2160 and cinema 4096 x 2160.

    It’s not cheap but you name a codec you want to convert to or export to and TotalCode is probably the most comprehensive transcoder exporter available to the professional market. If you are working professionally you should recover your costs in short order.

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