"On April 7, 2013, Sony announced that it had expanded XAVC to the consumer market with the release of XAVC S"
Nuff said!
Regards
Douglas
marianna.montague@avid.com
And have you asked Sony, Doug? You recall, I'm sure, that AMA is handled by plugins supplied by the camera makers. At least it's supposed to be.
Scott
The plug-ins are supplied by the vendors. And Douglas knows that. The real question is why hasn't Avid put the pressure on Sony to supply XAVC-S as part of the plug-in. Pretty much every other NLE that can support XAVC has had it from day 1, or close to it.
Dave S.
DStone: The plug-ins are supplied by the vendors. And Douglas knows that. The real question is why hasn't Avid put the pressure on Sony to supply XAVC-S as part of the plug-in. Pretty much every other NLE that can support XAVC has had it from day 1, or close to it.
You're assuming Avid hasn't applied whatever pressure it could. The underlying assumption from day one is also that Avid is obligated to support every format that comes along. I wouldn't have assumed that and didn't.
Who's currently developing the plugin?
Something to think about: There's a brand new car that uses a fuel that no other car uses. I buy the car, then demand that another manufacturer that doesn't make cars or fuel provide me the fuel.
Should I have bought the car without a source of fuel first? No.
Should I look to the maker of the car instead of the unrelated manufacturer for the required fuel? Yes.
Should I be mad for years at the unrelated manufacturer for not giving me fuel for the car? No.
Should I be appreciative that the unrelated manufacturer has now given an estimated timeline for having the fuel available? Yes.
Should I be upset with the car maker - and with myself - for not being sure that I could get the fuel anywhere I wanted in the first place? Yes.
"why hasn't Avid put the pressure on Sony to supply XAVC-S as part of the plug-in."
"You're assuming Avid hasn't applied whatever pressure it could."
There is an underlying clue in the "putting pressure".
Japanese companies do not respond to pressure.They respond to co-operation and understanding.
"Pretty much every other NLE that can support XAVC has had it from day 1, or close to it"
I will not mention the E**** word here, but they are a Japanese company that often releases updates of new codecs before the manufacturer releases the cameras!
That is co-operation.
RegardsDouglas
drbgaijin: "why hasn't Avid put the pressure on Sony to supply XAVC-S as part of the plug-in." "You're assuming Avid hasn't applied whatever pressure it could." There is an underlying clue in the "putting pressure". Japanese companies do not respond to pressure.They respond to co-operation and understanding. "Pretty much every other NLE that can support XAVC has had it from day 1, or close to it" I will not mention the E**** word here, but they are a Japanese company that often releases updates of new codecs before the manufacturer releases the cameras! That is co-operation. RegardsDouglas
I'm glad you gave that explanation, Doug. It reiterates why I often prefer products and opinions from countries other than Japan.
What you're saying (knowing that the camera maker writes the plugin) is that Sony deliberately refused to make its new format usable via AMA in Media Composer either before the new format was released or for all this time afterward. You still seem to blame Avid for what Sony did or did not do That's completely illogical.
Your "refraining" from saying Edius is extremely tiresome, especially since it still features prominently in your signature and because you know there is not any reason for you to "refrain" from mentioning it. We're all very happy that you like Edius. We like Media Composer. They're not mutually exclusive.
Now, let's get back to the topic. There is a plugin coming according to fairly recent news from Marianna in another thread. I gave a link to that thread earlier. The news was that it may come late this year or more likely early next year. Why Sony didn't already give support for MC in a plugin is something we may never know.
99 bucks for an XAVC-S ama plugin ... lowest line bolded by me
Should be added to the initial cost for the cam imho
http://www.drastic.tv/productsmenu-56/mediareactorlist/mediareactor-workstation#versions
We now offer plug-in specific versions of MediaReactor Workstation installs as an economical solution to user work flows based on the plug-in:
These plug-in specific versions are enabled via licensing, using the same install as the full MediaReactor Workstation.
Tomas
mjolnarn: 99 bucks for an XAVC-S ama plugin ... lowest line bolded by me Should be added to the initial cost for the cam imho http://www.drastic.tv/productsmenu-56/mediareactorlist/mediareactor-workstation#versions We now offer plug-in specific versions of MediaReactor Workstation installs as an economical solution to user work flows based on the plug-in: MediaReactor Server (for ALL supported applications) - $895.00 US (Windows or OS-X) MediaReactor Workstation for Assimilate (for Scratch and Scratch Lab) - $495.00 US (Windows or OS-X) MediaReactor Workstation for Avid (Media Composer) - $495.00 US (Windows or OS-X) MediaReactor Workstation for Adobe - $495.00 US (Windows or OS-X) MediaReactor Workstation for Apple (Final Cut Pro 7) - $295.00 US (OS-X only) MediaReactor Single for Avid (reads Sony XAVC-S in Avid software) - $99.00 US (Windows or OS-X) These plug-in specific versions are enabled via licensing, using the same install as the full MediaReactor Workstation.
Thanks for the reminder, Tomas. I know some people have been using it, it's been available for some time and reported here fairly often. The people who haven't taken this route evidently are still waiting for a plugin from Sony. Whether waiting is a good approach is an open question but I'd say it is not a good approach. If I had purchased such a camera and didn't return it after discovering the lack of a plugin, I doubt I'd wait for Sony to make the plugin and I'd probably go for the low-cost plugin from Drastic.
The problem is i am an educator and work for Australia's largest tertiary provider. I started last year and have worked for over a year to get Avid added to the editing package with the existing Adobe suite. Avid used to be in there for years but it ended up Premier for the past four or five years given the aggressive package Adobe offers with the full creative suite.
I had to fight tooth and nail to get Avid in with so many factors cost being one, currency among students being another, and ease of use. Finally i have Avid getting installed on 40 training computers, which being a government organization is a nightmare in itself, and still i am now being suggested to buy a plug-in for a format that works seamlessly on the other program? 40 licenses @$99 each adds up!
Our camera tech guy handles camera purchases and chooses whats best for the students and i agree with him. At the start of last year the purchased 14 Sony's. They are bloody good cameras and its not going to look good for me when this issue is revealed next term.
jed cahill: 40 licenses @$99 each adds up!
40 licenses @$99 each adds up!
Maybe there´s some kind of company / educational license Jed , just shoot the Drastic team a mail , it never hirts to ask, far better than waiting, when you have the answer you know more .
Here is what I know, mostly gleaned from Avid Community discussions:
- We have been waiting more than 3 years for this plug-in.
- Sony would normally be the one to supply the plug-in but they have not. They have said that the reason is that XAVC-S is a consumer codec, not meant for professional use. However, they advertise the a7 cameras lavishly in professional publications such as American Cinematographer.
- Other editing applications have no trouble with XAVC-S.
Knowing only a little about computers, let me offer a speculation:
- The plug-in for is particularly hard to write because of the architecture of Media Composer, which makes much more sparing use of the the computer's CPU than does, say, Premiere. For instance, Media Composer struggles with "AMA" links to H.264 files because of their high degree of compression: it plays these files, but if you try to edit with them, very soon the computer slows to a halt. This is not the case with some of the rival applications, such as Premiere Pro. Evidently, XAVC-S is even more compressed, and has a considerably higher bit-rate, than H.264. This is what the Avid engineers have been struggling with (and maybe it's the reason Sony declined to try). Another piece of evidence here comes from my experience with the Drastic plug-in: I could not make this plug-in work in any useful way, despite lots of help from the company; playback stuttered and skipped very badly despite the remedies that were suggested. I think this is a symptom of the difficulty with writing the MC plug-in. (The counter-argument to my speculation is that there is a MC plug-in for the professional cousin of XAVC-S.)
My work-around is to use Premiere Pro to view and evaluate clips, then transcode and export the chosen ones to DNxHD within Premiere and link these files to Media Composer. Needless to say, this is a big nuisance. Recently, I find myself starting to edit sequences in Premiere before committing to transcode and export. I like MC a lot but I see where this is all going. I'm certainly not going to give up my a7RII!
Rouch,
I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on the difficulty of writing a plug-in to make XAVC-S work. I have a copy of Convert-V3 from hdcinematics. This is what I use for bringing in my XAVC-S material into MC. All I use is the re-wrap function, which re-wraps the existing media into a MP4 .MOV file. There is NO transcoding involved. It's still XAVC-S, but just in a different container (and it runs at hundreds of frames per second to re-wrap). This AMA links to MC just fine (the 4K still stutters on my system, but that's IO bottleneck; I need to add another disk to the media RAID). And the reason this works is XAVC-S is really AVC1 in an MP4 wrapper natively, all of which MC supports! Only the container structure is different.
Edius, Premiere, Lightworks, Pinnacle Studio, all handle XAVC-S without issues. Most of them do it by linking to the media, not import and transcode. If you can already handle AVC and MP4, then it's only a matter of unpacking the XAVC container. And that's all AMA really does; provide the conduit into the media container. That's why it's fast. And if a $39 program from a 3rd party can do it...
Many thanks. I'm sure you're right. From a practical point of view, unfortunately, I'm using a Mac and Convert-V3 is Windows-only.
On the Mac, EditReady has your back:
http://www.divergentmedia.com/editready
Responsive, reputable developer, great feature set including rewrapping, timecode, joining clips spanned across multiple files, and others.
+1 for EditReady.
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