So, Apple have released an update to the Pro Video Formats available in quicktime. http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1396?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
The main thrust of this update appears to be to include MXF support in quicktime, including native support for XAVC in FCP7 and Quicktime7! I honestly never thought this would happen so I’m somewhat surprised by this. But it’s good news for FCP7 users and XAVC shooters in general. It does beg the question now as to whether you need the ProRes options for the FS7 or F5/F55.
Using Quicktime Player 7 you can play back XAVC MXF’s on a Mac computer, even in 4K, so VLC may no longer be required and the playback is smooth even with 4K clips. I’m not sure why but Quicktime Player 10 does not recognise 4K XAVC clips at all and HD XAVC clips get transcoded to .mov first. So download and install QT Player 7 for XAVC playback.
Currently it looks like the support is mainly for XAVC-I.
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I honestly didn’t test XAVC, but I’m not surprised that it works – if the codec is enabled to work through QuickTime, it’ll work in any QuickTime based app. QT10 is actually based on a completely different underlying architecture called AVFoundation… which has remained an unfinished work-in-progress since it was introduced.
P.S. I covered the practical end of using MXF with FCP7 / Compressor in a post on my own blog earlier in the month. ( http://artandtechnic.blogspot.com/2014/12/apple-pro-video-formats-20-update-mxf_10.html )
Hi,
thanks for all those very usefull informations.
I can’t figure out how to import XAVC material shot with a FS7 in FCP7.
I did install the Video Formats 2.0 and I can see the files in QT 7.
Is there any tricks I should know about?
Regards
Julien
Hi Alister,
I have tried as well to import XAVC footage from the FS7 in FCP7 … but even with the mentionned drivers installed, it does not seem to work. Just too bad !
Thanks anyway for your good work !
I don’t have any way to test this, but I know others are successfully importing XAVC into FCP7.
It looks like XAVC-I is supported, but not XAVC-L.
I have FCP X (10.1.4 with Pro Video Formats 2.0) as well as QuickTime Player 7. Both running on OS X 10.10.2
When opening/importing .MXF samples from a PXW-X70 (long GOP XAVC), you only get audio in both applications.
XAVC-I MXF samples do indeed work well in both FCP X and QT Player 7.
Sadly, no MXF files open at all in QT Player
Yes XAVC-I only in FCP7. AT the moment we are waiting for Apple to update FCP-X, then X will get XAVC-L support.
Hi,
I tested it with files from f55 and FC 7 is working good. But with the new version pro video formats 2.0.4 I cant export with recompress all frames. I think that this new version disable the option recompress all frames.
thanks
regards