Regarding Media Composer and Sony A7s XAVC-S files:
Although Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro X, Grass Valley Edius Pro, Autodesk Smoke and Sony Vegas Pro all support XAVC-S, at the time of this writing, the codec is not supported by Avid Media Composer without a 3rd party product.
To date, Sony has not included XAVC-S in their PDZK-MA2 plugin for Avid Media Composer. This curious omission may, or may not, be due to the fact that XAVC-S is a consumer codec, while the PDZK-MA2 plugin is focused on supporting codecs used in Sony's professional line of cameras.
Sorenson Squeeze and Telestream Episode do not support XAVC-S. At this point, the most notable *free* options that I have found for converting XAVC-S files are Blackmagic Design Resolve 11 Lite, FFmpeg and Sony Catalyst Browse.
Resolve is a very nice environment in which to perform this conversion, especially as it affords excellent tools for baking 1D and 3D LUTs into the resulting files. For projects using SLog2 profiles, this is obviously a very useful feature.
Resolve also offers the additional option of generating Avid MXF files which can be dragged directly into one's media folder, thereby avoiding the use of DNxHD Quicktime files that either need to be traditionally imported or AMA-ed. However, at the time of this writing, Resolve does not support XAVC-S audio. I expect this will change at some point, but it can obviously be a big issue until that time.
FFmpeg is a very popular, command line driven, open source library and software. And while there are a plethora of GUI front-ends available, none of those I tested are particularly well-designed, nor do they breed much confidence that they address the needs and concerns of professional users.
I have avoided the numerous $30-50 XAVC-S transcoding products that appear high-up in Google searches, even though I assume some of them work. I suspect most of them, if not all, are built atop FFmpeg anyway.
Sony's free Catalyst Browse software product is nice and straightforward, but it currently is not capable of batch transcoding XAVC-S -- it can only transcode one clip at a time. Ian Cook from Sony Broadcast and Professional Services posted a short message on the Avid forum stating that he was working to get batch transcoding back into the Browse product, but it is unclear if that will ever happen.
If you're willing to spend money, batch transcoding is supported by Sony's Catalyst Prepare, a $199.95 (US) product that offers many other useful features.
Also, Cinemartin Cinec reportedly uses FFmpeg as well as other libraries, and offers both an interface and conversion options that are clearly targeted to professionals. It is worth noting that this more professional functionality comes at a cost. The base price for the Pro Version that supports XAVC-S as an input file (with no forward software upgrades) is approximately $262 (US).
Those wishing to AMA XAVC-S media into Avid Media Composer might want to research Drastic Technologies' MediaReactor Workstation for Assimilate, Adobe, Apple and Avid. At $495 (US), this AMA plugin is not a cheap solution. However, for the professional editor, it does offer file compatibility with an impressive number of codec/containers that Avid does not support naively, and which can be quite useful when outside clients walk into the edit suite with "exotic" media.
HTH
Posted by: blafarm@yahoo.com
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