MXF Stuff Up

farss wrote on 8/29/2009, 7:51 PM
Someone from here sends me MXF files to look at their problem.
Oh oh, they will not open in V8.0b. I open them in V9.0a but other Vegas user doesn't have V9 so project file not much use to them.

OK, so I go back to those MXF files. Here's a thing, they also open in Ppro CS3 and VLC. Anyways need to move this forward to help a fellow Vegas user so I take the problem MXF files into V9 and render them out as um, MXF files, supposedly XDCAM EX compliant 4:2:0 HQ 29.970p.

Still no joy opening the files in V8.0b. Of course V8.0b quite happily opens all MY MXF files from the Clipbrowser??

So now I'm having one of those 'WTF gives here' moments with Vegas. Only logical conclusion I can reach is Vegas has been playing fast and loose with Sony's own MXF specification. It's a pretty poor show when Sony's own software company that must have access to the actual Sony specs gets it mixed up and yet Adobe can seemingly get it right. What's further confounding is all Vegas really does is read the mpeg-2 stream from the MXF/mp4 container, it does nothing with the essence metadata etc, it should be easily able to read the video regardless.

To distill the above into it's essence. The MXF files that V9 is creating are not exactly the same as the ones Sony's Clipbrowser is creating. At the very least this is a minor issue that's annoying to me, at the very worst it's a potential disaster if other apps such as FCP etc cannot read them.

Bob.

Comments

Greg Cervantes wrote on 8/29/2009, 9:53 PM
Yeah I hear you brother...
BTW, you may want to try Raylight Ultra.

It's a third party plug-in for 8.0 and 9.0 that lets you drop MXF files right into the timeline.
Malcolm D wrote on 8/30/2009, 4:46 PM
Hi Bob
There is not even consistency with Clip Browser.
V1.n made MXF's that opened with Snell & Wilcox MXF Desktop.
v2.n makes MXF's that will not open in the same program.
Is it necessary to use the 4.2.0 EX form of MXF?
Maybe the 50MB 4.2.2 codec will be more interchangeable.
I think this is what Ulf uses in his Cineform comparisons.
Malcolm
Jay Gladwell wrote on 8/30/2009, 5:40 PM

Bob, I'm curious. Have you contacted SCS about this? I'd be courious to hear what they have to say.


farss wrote on 8/31/2009, 12:23 AM
Malcolm:

My first mistake was to use XDCAM 422 MXF. That for sure is not supported in V8. I went back to V9 and used the XDCAM EX MXF (4:2:0) and stil V8.0b would not accept it.
I suspect you are right though about the Clipbrowser itself. It could be that Sony changed the MXF output from that then Vegas played catchup and somewhere in the midst of that backwards compatibility got broken.

Jay:

No I haven't. I will check to ensure I'm running the latest version of the Clipbrowser. One reason I was tardy in updating that is because there was a problem at one time between what it was outputting and Vegas with 50/60p and the audio.
It could be as simple as a lack of backwards compatibility somehow compounded by there being several unkown variables involved. Before I get support involved I'd like to do some more testing.

Bob.
Jay Gladwell wrote on 8/31/2009, 10:12 AM

Understood. Thank you for the clarification.

If I'm not mistaken, ClipBrowser is up to v. 2.5.1.

In any case, that had to be a maddening situtation to find yourself in!