Canon .MXF footage - should I transcode it? What to?

I've got some footage recorded from a Canon XF105. It's 1920x1080 and it's 3D - so there's a pair of files for each clip.
In AE it plays frustratingly slowly and I have to do a RAM render to see it at full speed. In Premiere it plays ok.
Is there a format I'd be better off transcoding it to before working on it? One that doesn't lose quality but gains playback speed?
I'm on a MacBook Pro with CS5.

To add to what Dave said, here is a wonderful post from Rick Gerard explaining why AE doesn't play back footage like an NLE.
Sony Vegas, Premiere Pro, Final Cut, Avid are all NLE's (Non Linear Editors) and they are specifically designed to playback a video stream. With any of them, if you stack enough layers or effects on the video they will have to render a new video stream based on pixel based calculations for every pixel in the stack. This rendering, especially for HD sources or for complex plug-ins, will take quite a bit of time.
After Effects, Flame, Fusion, Shake -- are all pixel based image processing applications that act very much like Photoshop. They calculate the values of every pixel in every frame, come up with a new pixel, and then play those pixels back as a video stream. More importantly, AE and all the other pixel based compositing apps, always work internally with completely uncompressed pixel data. NLE's rely on codecs and in some cases, hardware, to playback the video. It's an entirely different way of working with moving images.
In After Effects you enable the preview by loading a bunch of frames into RAM then the video stream is played back. You start the process with the 0 key on the numeric keypad and not with the Space Bar as you do in nearly every NLE ever created. The length of the preview depends entirely on how much free ram you have available and it takes some time to generate these new pixels. The more layers, the more effects, the more calculations that need to be performed the longer it will take to process the RAM preview. There's currently no way around this rendering time. A modern HLE will handle an amazing number of video streams simultaneously, but as soon as you exceed the capability of the system you're stuck with a render. Most NLE's, given the same number of calculations, actually take a little longer than After Effects to do the same kind of effects. Open GL, and other GPU acceleration helps many NLE's achieve higher performance but it has yet to be implemented into a pixel based compositing app. The sad truth of the matter is that if you want to do compositing in any of the available compositing apps, you have to wait for renders. They are getting better. Memory management and efficiency is improving. GPU accelerated effects are being added, but for now, that's about as good as it gets.
I hope this helps. As long as you use After Effects to create shots and don't try to make it do the work of a NLE you should be fine. Movies come from NLE's, amazing shots come from AE.

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AE CS6 Crashing when scrubbing .mxf footage

Hi everyone,
I am using native .mxf - MPEG-2 HD footage shot with a Canon XF300, and nearly every time I place it in the timeline or or viewer and scrub AE freezes and crashes. Non mxf footage doesn't cause AE to crash.
I am running a newly built Windows 7 64bit system
Dual Xeon 2687's
EVGA Classified SRX motherboard
96 GB RAM
3 SSD (operating system and applications on one, scratch and cache on others)
GeForce GTX580 3GB
internal 10K raptor drive (footage)
External OWC 4TB Qx2 RAID 5 / 0 (switched configurations in an attempt to resolve issue) (footage) - connected eSATA / USB2.0
I have adjusted the preview resolution settings, the preferences, the location of scratch disks, changed the location and connectivity of media hard disk, I have attempted older drivers, and ive switched video cards - I previously was using Quadro4000. I have reinstalled the Adobe Suite, and just yesterday did a complete reinstallation of the OS. And that hasn't seemed to solved the issue.
In the Windows event log, the error reads: Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Adobe\After Effects CS6\Support Files\AfterFX.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CS6\Support Files\mc_dec_mp2v.dll
I am new to .mxf and I have only been using this footage format for a few months, however the crashing issue did not occur until about a month ago. Im not using proxies I believe it was around the time when I applied the latest AE update. I cant say with confidence it was the update because I also was switching GPU drivers to resolve Premiere Pro crashing. Essentially AE worked when Premiere Pro didn't, and now visa versa.
It always catches and crashes before going into adaptive resolution. Are the hard drives not able to keep up?
Footage runs fine in Premiere Pro
Hardware seems to check out.
Any insight would be appreciated.

I suspect you're an occasional (i.e. not full-time) AE user like me, you expect things to work as advertised, and when they don't, you're at a loss.
You have to remember this: AE is a MATURE APPLICATION. There is code under the AE hood that has been there for 20 years. Adobe doesn't totally re-write the code from version to version, they patch where necessary to avoid a massive re-write. If they did otherwise, your reasonably-priced, off-the-shelf software would be much, much pricier, and where would that leave you?
Does every such patch work each and every time? Adobe does a lot of testing, but to expect that every possibility has been covered isn't realistic.
Here's another consideration: there are so many combinations of operating systems, system manufacturers, third-party cards, processors, etc. that can accommodate AE that it's getting increasingly difficult for an off-the-shelf application like AE to be all things to all people. That's why you see so many threads where people ask diagnostic questions about OS, Processors, cards, media containers, codecs, AE settings, etc. They all play a role in getting AE to work properly.
I'm not apologizing for AE. I'm not apologizing for Adobe, either. But given the currentl landscape, that's a just a fact of life.
If I had a big shooting schedule coming up, and I knew in advance that AE would play a big role in my projects, I would find a way to transcode my footage on its way into the computer that would cause AE fewer fits.
But that's me; I'm not a big fan of being on the bleeding edge, I like consistency. You may approach the topic from a different point of view.

Canon mxf import

Repeated emails to Canon have not produced anything in the way of a plug-in to allow FCPX to natively edit .mxf wrapped footage from the XF100, XF105, XF300 and XF305 cameras. Instead, what I use (currently) which is time consuming but it works is a product from an Asian company called AUNSOFT: TransMXF. The interface is pretty simple. Click on the filmstrip, upper left corner, and you can command-click as many .mxf files within your copied folder from the camera as you wish. Unfortunately, one of the laborious parts of this process is that you have to open each folder individually, click on the .mxf file, and then, while holding down the command key, go to the next folder, etcetera, until you have a pile of them loaded into the app.
Then you need to tell it which format to convert to. I use ProRes 422, sometimes opting for ProRes 422 (LT) if the footage doesn't need to be top resolution. Select the destination and...
...push that big button at the lower right of the window. Then walk away, because its going to take processing power and time, and you really don't want to be doing much else unless you have a nice quad-core processor.
I'm still waiting for Canon and Apple to catch up to Adobe Premiere CS5.5, which natively imports and edits .mxf footage with only minimal re-processing time (and you work with the footage while it's doing some background processing). As is so often the case, there are pluses and minuses to all applications--with Aunsoft, its mainly that it won't automatically recognize .mxf files and you have to click on each one manually.

Well, it gets a little complicated, because this app only wants to read the files with the .mxf suffix. I haven't triedI was wrong in one thing I wrote above: to do a command click on several .mxf files, one needs to do that first, then DRAG the selected mxf files onto the converter's main window, where they will load. But you know, that's a good tip. Rather than opening each of the subfolders (everything in the "CLIPS001" folder, for example) and command clicking, laboriously, each .mxf file, as I've been doing....
I can do as you suggest, and get this, which I can then just "select all" and drag:
Thanks for the tip.

How do I import Canon HD footage shot @ 30 fps into FCP?

Greetings all -- have Canon HD footage shot at 30 fps, not realizing Sony equipment can't "read" it and when I tried hooking the camera directly up to the computer to import the footage into FCP, FCP does not recognize the camera (No Communication). Anyone who can help with what settings I should use, etc.? I would be most grateful! Thank you....

Use HDV FireWire Basic as a device control setting in FCP.. might also help to read this: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302407
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I went to bed last night feeling good that I was going to deliver a solid project for my client this afternoon. Woke up this morning, updated to the latest Premiere Pro CC and now in my project all of the Canon MXF clips on every timeline are completely different than what I edited together. They are the same camera angles, just that the edited clips have been replaced by footage from earlier or later in the MXF file. I tried deleting all preview and media cache files and nothing has fixed it so far. Project is due in 4 hours and there is no way I can start all over. Any suggestions?
Running the latest Premiere Pro CC, Mac running Mountain Lion.
I'm going to keep plugging away here and hopefully I can figure something out.

Hi mcnallyj,
Please check the below Forum link to revert back to 7.0.1 update and if you want to install 7.1 update you can go to
the download link below the Forum link.
http://forums.adobe.com/message/5827476
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=5680
Regards,
Vinay

Editing footage with sony HXR-MC50E what cable or program do I need to transfer

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One small correction-- you do not use File-->Import. You must use Log and Transfer in FCP 7 or Import From Camera/Import Media in FCP X. In FCP 7 the clips will be automatically converted to ProRes upon import. In FCP X you can choose to work with the native files (re-wrapped to .mov) or you can optionally transcode to ProRes. When importing in FCP X, enable the 'create optimized media files' option to convert to ProRes. If you do not enable this option the files will remain in their native codec.

Canon 7D footage, EXIF/metadata

Doing a test project in PP6 (currently a FCP7 user) and want to make sure there are no special tricks to importing Canon DSLR footage, other than just importing the H.264 files. I'm used to keeping the entire DCIM folder structure in FCP for transcoding to ProRes, want to make sure I don't need the other files on the card (amd yes, I am backing them all up!)
Also, is there any way to bring in the EXIF data (metadata) along with the clips? I assume this would involve the .THM files on the card; is there a different import method for merging that info with the clips? Would Prelude or Bridge help here?
TIA,
John K.
MPro 2.66 Quad, 10.6, 12GB ram, Creative Cloud CS6

Just FYI to anyone else who comes to this thread:
If you drag in DSLR clips directly from the card WITHOUT converting/transcoding they will NOT have timecode. At least that's my experience with the Canon 7D H.264 files. The timecode is contained in the .THM files and if you don't convert using those then each clip's timecode will start at 0.
It may not matter to you if you're doing a quick edit in PPro, but if you export out to other programs like FCP 7 and switch to transcoded versions (ProRes) the clips will not replace properly because the timecode will be completely off. The solution is to always transcode ahead of time with your utility of choice.
HTH,
JVK

Premiere Pro CS5 playback stops with Canon DSLR footage

I am using Canon DSLR footage (5D and 1D). When I import the footage for the first time everything works OK. If I save, close and reopen the project without doing anyother activity on my PC everything continues to work OK.
My problem is that after I close the project and start doing other activity on the PC e.g. using Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash etc and not necessarily all of them, and then reopen Premiere Pro I then start to get a problem with playback stopping on the timeline after about 5-10 seconds.
What I have found is that if I import a fresh Canon DSLR file from the camera then everything starts working fine again until I start using other programs.
There must be something on my PC that is causing a conflict but I can't work out what it is.
Are there any known issues that might help me solve this problem.
My PC is running Windows 7 Pro, 64 bit. I have two x 2.66Ghz quad core processors (NOT hyperthreading), 12 GB RAM, Nvidia FX 4800 graphics card.
Any help would be appreciated.

I have finally resolved this problem and it is several weeks since the "fix" with no repeat of the problem.
I uninstalled Nero from my system and straight away the problem resolved.
I noticed that prior to removing Nero that it was taking priority over Quicktime which, I think, was causing the conflict with codec for the Canon DSLR files in Premier.
It has now been 4 weeks since I removed Nero and there has been no sign of the problem of the video footage stopping in playback on the timeline.

Premiere 2014 MXF Footage Still Crashing, Glitching, Picture Freezes but Audio Plays Fine, Footage Duplicating Itself in Media Bin & Timeline - HitFilm3 pro plays fine!

WTH is going with Premiere? These continuing problems are just getting worse and worse. I just imported 12 hours of MXF footage at 720p and almost all the footage has duplicated itself in my media bin when I import. rather the files are there ie: AA009906.MXF, and so on numerically, but the lengths are all the same, and the picons play the exact same footage within the media bin. So I drag all the footage to the timeline where the footage is all duplicated the same amount of files there are. But not always. Also if I just drag the first file down to timeline, almost the whole disk shows up on the timeline. Finally when playing, after about a couple of minutes, the pictures freezes on some non descript frame for the rest of about 2 hours worth. Then everything all picks up fine. Next chip of files same thing but at different places.
What's really a hoot, is that I just downloaded a trial version of HITFILM3PRO editing software and all my footage plays just fine without any of ADOBE's glitches. Also downloaded AVL Player for MXF files, to which everything plays just fine too.
This is oh so ridiculous that If I weren't laughing so much right now, i'd be on the verge of a heart attack with all this Adobe Crap!
I can't fathom why Adobe isn't paying me to be a Beta Tester, instead of me having to call my new client, Once Again, and tell them that their project is on Hold, Once again, just the same for every project ever since adobe introduced "CREATIVE CLOUD".

Hi TVPRich,
WTH is going with Premiere? These continuing problems are just getting worse and worse. I just imported 12 hours of MXF footage at 720p and almost all the footage has duplicated itself in my media bin when I import. rather the files are there ie: AA009906.MXF, and so on numerically, but the lengths are all the same, and the picons play the exact same footage within the media bin. So I drag all the footage to the timeline where the footage is all duplicated the same amount of files there are. But not always. Also if I just drag the first file down to timeline, almost the whole disk shows up on the timeline. Finally when playing, after about a couple of minutes, the pictures freezes on some non-descript frame for the rest of about 2 hours worth. Then everything all picks up fine. Next chip of files same thing but at different places.
That's strange. Can you upload a test file so I can try and replicate the behavior?
You did ingest via the Media Browser after copying the camera's HD cards to your media HD right?
What kind of camera is this?
I can't fathom why Adobe isn't paying me to be a Beta Tester, instead of me having to call my new client, Once Again, and tell them that their project is on Hold, Once again, just the same for every project ever since adobe introduced "CREATIVE CLOUD".
I don't know why, but you sure do get your fair share of issues. I would be happy to try and help you get through this if I can.
Thanks,
Kevin

CS6 fails to import Canon .mxf files. In CS5.5 it works always great.

On CS6.01 I can not import Canon mxf video footage. There is always import failure message window. Same result if I copied CF Card to Hard disc.
On CS5.5 it works always great. I have both premiere versions on same computer:
Camera: Canon XF100
Size: 1440 x 1080
Framerate: 25,00
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate
Premiere Pro CS6.01
AMD Phenom II X4 980
16 GB ram
AMD Phenom II X4 980
1TB Hard disc
1280 MBGeForce GTX 570
On CS5.5 it works always fine, no problem! Same result on my notebook, I installed both versions CS5.5 and CS6.01, on CS6.01 it never works.
Any idea?

CS5.x is obsolete software and is no longer supported by Adobe ever since CS6 was released. The last version of the Camera Raw plug-in to run with CS5.x was ACR 6.7.1. There will be no further updates for CS5.x.
You need to look for, download, install, launch and run the free, stand-alone Adobe DNG Converter 8.8 on each batch of raw files that cannot be opened in ACR 6.7.1.
Adobe DNG 8.8:
Adobe DNG Converter Windows
Adobe DNG Converter Mac
You are not addressing Adobe here in these user forums. You are requesting help from volunteers users just like you who give their time free of charge.

Ingesting C300 mxf Footage Audio Problems

Hi
I've been having a lot of problems working with native mxf footage from the Canon C300. I ingest the footage via Canon XF utility and then import into Premiere ProCC. The flies directories are never altered or changed. Some of the files import fine with the audio synched correctly but a lot the files have their audio completely out of synch and not corresponding to the clip being played. I've had to take these individual mxf files and compress to ProRes in order for the audio to be synched and workable.
Is this a common problem any solutions?
Thanks
Dave

Is this a common problem any solutions?
Yes, this happens if you open and play the clips when some of them are still Conforming. Importing clips, wait for the conforming to be done, then playback the clips works o.k. This happens with all media when using it during conforming/generating peak files.
The solution is:
1. Edit > Preferences > Media
2. Write down the file path to "Media Cache Files" and "Media Cache"
3. Close Premiere Pro and save the project
4. Delete the folders and all it's subcontent you found under step #2
5. Launch Premiere Pro, open the project
6. In the lower right corner you will see a yellow bar that shows you that the clips are being conformed.
7. Don't touch, playback anything until the conforming is done.
8. Play back the media
This solves issues like this 99 out of 100 times.
/Roger

There no lenses listed in the profile selection area. How do I fix this I use canon gear that should

There no lenses listed in the profile selection area. How do I fix this I use canon gear that should be there. Help!

There are different profiles for camera Raw, and for camera JPG - and LR filters the lenses list, to show only the profiles available for the particular image you have highlighted.
If you have selected a JPG image, you will usually see a much shorter or even an empty list of lenses - as compared with what you see if you select a Raw image. Most lens profiles with interchangeable-lens systems, are designed to correct Raw images. On the other hand, if you select an image taken with (say) a compact digital camera or supported cameraphone, any support for that will usually be in JPG.
You can get a free Lens downloader utility from the Adobe Labs website, which gives access to the full library of lens profiles that the general Adobe user community has uploaded. Each one listed, says whether it is for Raw or not. Some of these will have been generated by end users (using another free utility) and are of variable quality. But you may get lucky, and find just what you need. Or, if it is a rarer lens or if you have particular requirements, it is not so hard to make your own profile using the Adobe utility.
You do not need to use a profile made specifically for your camera model. The only limitation is: a crop-sensor-generated profile, will not include the right optical coverage for a fullframe camera model.
Another option is to "kludge" a copy of an existing Raw-only profile, so that it supports JPG instead. This just requires a text editor - you change a line within a structured-text file, from Camera Raw="True", to "False". Then you save that into the Lens Profile folder in the Adobe / CameraRaw area inside your user login's "application data" area.

Match canon 60d still to canon 60d footage.

I'm not sure if this is the right forum, but I'm hoping someone here might be able to help.
I have a still taken with a canon 60d. I also have movie footage, taken from exactly the same position. I want to match up the still pixel-for-pixel with the footage. The difficulty is that the still is 5184x3456 = 3:2 and the movie footage is 1920x1080 = 16:9
What I want to do, is take the still into Photoshop and crop/resize it so that it is 1920x1080, and it has a pixel-for-pixel match with the movie footage.
Looking at a screengrab from the footage, and comparing it to the still, it's clear that the still is cropped, but I haven't been able to work out exactly what sequence of actions will match the still to the screengrab.
A further complication is that 60d actually records at 1920x1088, not 1920x1080, although After Effects seems to ignore this.
Any help would be much appreciated.

'the right forum' depends on which software you're using - this is the Premiere Pro section. Let us know and we'll move the message to the right place for you.
If you're cropping in PS the easiest way to match the two images (still and an exported frame from the video) is to open the exported frame and add the still as a new layer, move and scale it to match (turn down the opacity on the still to see what you're doing then reset the opacity when done). Then save the file as a JPEG or TIFF, which will crop everything to the document size - as your base layer was the exported frame, the resulting file will be the same dimensions as the video. This of course assumes that the still and video were shot with camera and lens settings so that everything you can see in the video is also present in the still.
Premiere Pro, After Effects etc. can crop and zoom a still image too, but it's easier in PS if all you want is a static image (i.e. the zoom isn't animated).
You will find it tricky to get a perfect 1:1 pixel match, as the encoding for video used on DSLRs doesn't read the same pixels as a still shot does. There's interpolation and sampling going on, so you can get the two layers to be visually the same, but not mathematically.
Canon video at 1088 is always a bit confusing, it's down to the way the sensor polling takes place. Just place the footage into a 1920x1080 timeline at 100% and it'll crop off the left and/or right edges - do not use the 'scale to frame size' feature in Prem Pro or you'll force a resampling of every pixel, and lose a lot of quality.

Downloaded Appleworks 6.2.9 for Mac Updater-2.sim but when i try to open the file i receive the message "legacy image should be updated". what does this mean and/or entail?

downloaded Appleworks 6.2.9 for Mac Updater-2.sim but when i try to open the file i receive the message "legacy image should be updated". what does this mean and/or entail?

Mavericks is not recognizing the .smi extension - on my Mac it thinks it's a RealPlayer document. You are not going to be able to do anything with this - it requires AppleWorks to be present to be updated, and you can't run AppleWorks on Mavericks (other than by the rather roundabout process of installing Snow Leopard Server in Parallels and installing AppleWorks on that, as described here).

Canon .MXF footage - should I transcode it? What to?

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