I am setting up the post on a small feature shooting on Sony EX 1.

We will be cutting on 3.1.4 MC Mac.

Is there a PDF out there with updated instructions on the transcoding process.

Does anybody have a preferred workflow?

My apologies for the typo on last post!

If you're shooting a lot of EX it may well be worth upgrading to 3.5 where you have AMA support for direct EX-1 support - no imports, no transcode - point it at the files and edit.

Sycophant:

it may well be worth upgrading to 3.5

With Mac and EX making sure you have the right versions of all the Sony software is the biggest hurdle IMO

Indeed, I wasn't suggesting to edit directly from the cards (although that is possible). Backing them up to a drive is a must, and would be my first step regardless of the workflow.

If you do choose to use the ClipBrowser method to wrap the EX media into MXF containers, then I'd advise against the recommended 'Avid AAF' method as it leaves you with no way of relinking media should it go offline... I wrote about it on my website: XDCAM EX Workflow in Avid

Thank you, we are on Mac's, is this an issue? Also is everything carried over so that we can conform from the original files.

Is it possible to do a one light for dailies on a copy of the original.

You will be working with 'online' resolution from the get-go so a reconform isn't really necessary. There's no processing options in the rewrapping, so no 'dailies' process as such.

Once you've wrapped the media in MXF Avid will edit it no problems. For the finished product you'll probably need to render into a DNxHD codec to get best performance or do a digital cut to an HD master.

If you use the 'Avid AAF' process that's generally detailed in the EX tutorials, you will not be able to relink to the original media, which is why I strongly recommend not using that method. Instead, export 'MXF for NLE' and then import the resulting MXF files. It is a slower turn-around, but maintains information necessary to relink to clips from backup if need be.

Dylan have you tried at the final stage in a new project repeating the original Avid AAF process (from the original BPAV folder on a media harddrive). Importing a sequence bin from the first project and relinking to the newly imported media?

Yeah, it doesn't work at all.

The Sony ClipBrowser simply doesn't create the right metadata to allow a relink. If you manually populated information on all the clips it might be possible to get around it, but as it is the MXF media creates lacks a whole lot of vital metadata. I don't have the details handy, but I got down and dirty with an MXF data dumper at the time, and it was very clear to me then why it wasn't going to work.

Basically the media that ClipBrowser creates has no source metadata at all (not a visitle tape name, nor a unique source-id, nor UNC path).

Sycophant:

Yeah, it doesn't work at all.

Yet another example of camera manufacturers using "clever new compression algorithm" to record to expensive proprietry media( SxS or P2) then semi crippling the fomat for any real Post environment.

Well yeah. I was somewhat surprised when I went to a Sony EX launch event nearly two years ago and learned they were wrapping the EX footage in MP4, when they'd adopted MXF (sucessfully) with XDCAM. Strange choice.

The MXF the Clip Browser creates during that 'Avid AAF' process does conform to Avid's basic requirements (obviously, it works) but just lacks metadata. I'm sure they could add it pretty easily.