I wrote about this on my site last night, but thought I'd post here too... XDCAM EX Workflow in Avid

Basically the recommended workflow with XDCAM EX material, as detailed in tutorials and forum posts here, using the Sony ClipBrowser's "Avid AAF" export method has a serious weakness. Namely lack of Metadata. There simply isn't enough metadat in the clips to allow Avid to relink the media should you ever loose the media files created in the initial export.

Also, given that the clips lack Tape or Disc Label information a manual reconform is very difficult also as there is no easy way to determine which original source card a clip came from, so even if you've backed up the XDCAM EX BPAV folder (as you should) you can't bring a project back online if footage is lost.

The only way to work around this currently is to avoid the 'Avid AAF' export method and instead opt for the 'MXF for NLE' export method which will create OP-1a MXF files that can then be imported as any video or image file would be. The clips then have the necessary information to allow a Batch Import later. But it's a slower process.

Nice find!

Sycophant:

But it's a slower process.

million dollar question... how much slower?? Thanks

AndrewAction:

Nice find!

Sycophant:

But it's a slower process.

million dollar question... how much slower?? Thanks

Hard to say. The export process from ClipBrowser should be about the same, maybe even a little quicker. But you'll have an overhead on the Avid import as it's having to write the OP-Atom files. I'd guess at less that twice the time of the 'Avid AAF' process. Which for my tests a few weeks ago with 25Mbit material was about 4x Realtime.

I might test it sometime - if tomorrow is a slow day maybe.

I'm currently in the middle of a project that uses the mxf for nle workflow and it's not that bad (compared to tape ingest, anyway).  I'm on a 8 core 3.0 and my workflow is exporting one folder of media out of clipbrowser while importing a previous folder into avid.  This maxes out the system, but at least you're multi-tasking.  The other day it took me about 9 hours to ingest 11.5 hours of media this way.  The other option is to export out of clip browser during the day, and then import all of the mxf media at once and leave for the night (or lunch depending on how much there is) to let the computer do it's business.

gumbaedit:

The other day it took me about 9 hours to ingest 11.5 hours of media this way

With that sort of ingest time whilst using multi tasking realtime ingest via HD SDI straight into a format that you dont have to transode on export starts to look much better.

The Sony Browser export to Avid NLE works well here for projects without that much media.

Yeah, sometimes a simple baseband capture is nice. We thought about that, and got a PMW-EX30 deck on loan from Sony. Nice deck in some ways, but suffers from the same affliction their HDV decks suffered from initial - lack of remote. It has HD-SDI out at least, but there's no 9-pin remote, and despite indiciations to the contrary I couldn't get Avid to talk to the deck as a DVCAM deck via Firewire at all. So that idea was scratched.

I believe direct import from XDCAM EX media/backups into Media Composer shouldn't be too far off.

Actually, depending on your point of view, the transcode time isn't that bad.  I had to give quicktimes to the director of all of the footage.  It took about realtime to render out 9.5 hours of footage as H264s with TC burnin.  Again, this was done at night when I was at home watching TV.  It's about the same to output as DNXHD.  Keep in mind, this is with an 8 core.  In my opinion, the true great thing about tape based formats is that you (or the assistant) can watch the footage as it goes in and allow yourself more time for editing.