Blue_MiSfit
2nd December 2011, 06:08
Hello Folks!
I've been dealing with a lot of MXF files recently, specifically the widespread (and irritating) 1080i XDCAM HD422 variety. Prior to this I'd never really touched MXF, and wasn't sure what to expect.
For those who are curious, XDCAM HD422 is essentially Long GOP MPEG-2 using 4:2:2 chroma subsampling. The flavor I'm using is 1080i60, at 50mbps CBR. It's pretty good quality, and usually comes with 8 channels of 24 bit, 48 KHz AES style PCM (to account for 4 AES pairs).
I've found that despite MXF aiming to be "the" universal post-production container, there are lots of "gotchas". One such issue is regarding trims and concatenations.
When it comes to other containers like MPEG PS, MPEG TS, MKV, MOV, AVI etc... performing trims is fairly straighforward, and there are a lot of free / open-source tools that can be used. Concatenation is also possible, if a bit more involved. DGIndex, MKVMergeGUI, QuickTime Pro, mpg2cut2, VirtualDub and others come to mind.
With MXF, I've yet to find a good solution. Sure, you can dump it on the timeline of an NLE and trim what you want, but this usually involves a lengthy import process. Transcoding is an option, but it's slow and you obviously take a quality hit.
Does anyone have a good (preferably free, but payware is okay too) solution to cut and join MXF files?
Derek
I've been dealing with a lot of MXF files recently, specifically the widespread (and irritating) 1080i XDCAM HD422 variety. Prior to this I'd never really touched MXF, and wasn't sure what to expect.
For those who are curious, XDCAM HD422 is essentially Long GOP MPEG-2 using 4:2:2 chroma subsampling. The flavor I'm using is 1080i60, at 50mbps CBR. It's pretty good quality, and usually comes with 8 channels of 24 bit, 48 KHz AES style PCM (to account for 4 AES pairs).
I've found that despite MXF aiming to be "the" universal post-production container, there are lots of "gotchas". One such issue is regarding trims and concatenations.
When it comes to other containers like MPEG PS, MPEG TS, MKV, MOV, AVI etc... performing trims is fairly straighforward, and there are a lot of free / open-source tools that can be used. Concatenation is also possible, if a bit more involved. DGIndex, MKVMergeGUI, QuickTime Pro, mpg2cut2, VirtualDub and others come to mind.
With MXF, I've yet to find a good solution. Sure, you can dump it on the timeline of an NLE and trim what you want, but this usually involves a lengthy import process. Transcoding is an option, but it's slow and you obviously take a quality hit.
Does anyone have a good (preferably free, but payware is okay too) solution to cut and join MXF files?
Derek