Import (XF-300) MXF spanned clips in 5.5 - how?

Adobe claims:
"Enhanced Canon XF native support
Preview Canon XF footage in the Media Browser panel and utilize camera metadata throughout your preproduction and post-production workflows. Spanned clips are displayed as a single asset in the Media Browser, reducing clutter."
I say: Ok, how?
The online man page instructions for "Importing assets from tapeless formats" simply doesn't work. Selecting a single clip of a span imports that one clip. Selecting all the clips or a parent directory of the clips imports all the clips as separate clips - just like they appeared in PP5. It does not import mutiple copies, as Adobe claims will happen.
So it looks like "Enhanced Canon XF native support" claims are bogus, or maybe just poorly implemented.
What conerns me is that Adobe's help pages don't even reference XF format.
At this stage, it looks like Adobe Premiere Pro fails to properly support Canon XF-300/305, just as Premiere Pro 5 did.
Brett

Kevin, thanks for your prompt response.
I've finally had the time to try this again and understand it.
I wasn't using the media browser. I was using the import function from the Project panel, which is how I have always loaded clips. I had never used the media browser and assumed that one ended up using it anyway no matter which front end used for import. i.e. I thought the media browser was simply the back end file selector dialogue.
So I see that (only) the media browser will import spanned clips as one unified clip into the sequence, which is an improvement for sure. I do think that import of the Project panel should work the same way.
I initially had a problem though, as my top level directory above the numbers clip dirs was not CONTENTS. It had to be renamed to avoid conflict with other CONTENTS clip set in the same project. So the media browser refused to load the spanned clips together, but would allow me to load a single clip. It wasn't until I guessed, and renamed my top dir back to CONTENTS that things worked and the the View as dropdown showed the magic Canon XF option.
I suggest this implied requirement be made clear in the manual, noting that the top dir must be named CONTENTS for this to work. Yes, I believe that's the MXF standard, but many people will rename their parent directory so multiple cards can be copied into the same project directory, instead of having yet another single-entry directory above the CONTENTS directory, like CARD1 CARD2 etc.
I beieve that the software is at fault and should be changed - if it can see mutliple numbered MXF dirs at the same level, it should simply deal with them. I know you can't fix that, but please warn people.
Anyway, thanks again for your reply. It got me on the correct path to a solution.
Brett

Similar Messages

Spanned clips from my p2 card won't import fcp6

hey shane
i am in fcp6 and having the spanned clip issue. i have a spanned clip that won't import into fcp6. i used p2cms to offload so i do not have the lastfile.txt but could you walk me thru how to import these 4 or 5 spanned clips?

As long as you have all the card dump folders loaded into the Log and Transfer window, FCP will stitch together spanned clips. So if your clip goes from one card to another, load both cards into L&T, then import.
Shane

How do I import a P2 spanned clip?

Hello,
I've not yet been able to find an answer to this problem - manuals/ websites etc.
I have a P2 spanned clip and would like to import it into FCP 5.
Please could you recommend the steps I should take, or perhaps refer me to a source that I might use to resolve this difficulty.
Thank you

Burping the import? Gross...
So it is creating QT files, but they are bad? Or do you have the red exclaimation points? Or does it fail to import?
#36 - One or More P2 files failed to import.
Shane's Stock Answer #36 - "One or more clips failed to import..."
Very often in the field with this camera the camera operator will delete clips from the P2 card that they just don't like. That is the beauty of this camera. But, the still for that video file (located in the CLIP folder in the CONTENTS folder)...the still that you see when you are in the P2 Import window...is not deleted. So you will see the image, and the name, but the video file would have been deleted.
What you can do it compare the file names in the VIDEO folder and CLIP folder and see if anything is missing. If something is, then you know what the problem is. You can then just import the rest a few at time, skipping that one.
ALSO...in the P2 Import window...in the P2 Browser, there is a little sprocket drop down menu. Click on that and choose PREFERENCES. Uncheck REMOVE PULLDOWN and then try importing again.
ALSO...make sure your file names aren't too long. Try shortening them and see if that works.
Shane

Canon MXF - improperly spanned clips - When will it be safe to update?

Anyone know when it'll be safe to update PPro? We've been having issues with PPro being unable to properly span clips from the Canon C300 since the 7.1 Update... Doing a quick check of the forums, it seems like 7.2 and 7.2.1 are just as broken (though possibly in different ways...?). Tried the most recent update, but wound up having to uninstall and re-install 7.0.1 in order to get out projects to work again...
Is Adobe working on this? I've filled out bug reports, but, uh, obviously Adobe has more pressing concerns.
Rather than re-type the whole thing, here are previous threads detailing the problem:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1328908
http://forums.adobe.com/message/5729424

Hi J... did you have any joy with this issue... I am having major problems... see this thread
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1410059?tstart=0
no one seems to have any ideas... so many variables regarding camera firmware, edit software etc. The sand is in constant stae of flux.
The Canon C300 takes great pictures but this whole spanning technology is really getting in the way... almost enough to make you feel that tape was a really good idea.
cheers
Pete

Clicks and visual interference from all footage from xf 300 mxf files

I'm having problems with clicks and visual interference from all footage from xf 300 mxf files in CC have formatted cf cards on camera as this has happened before and had camera checked with no problems has anyone else had this problem as cannot find anything anywhere. The cards are Sandisk Extreme 32GB and the manufactures say its not their card??

Kevin, thanks for your prompt response.
I've finally had the time to try this again and understand it.
I wasn't using the media browser. I was using the import function from the Project panel, which is how I have always loaded clips. I had never used the media browser and assumed that one ended up using it anyway no matter which front end used for import. i.e. I thought the media browser was simply the back end file selector dialogue.
So I see that (only) the media browser will import spanned clips as one unified clip into the sequence, which is an improvement for sure. I do think that import of the Project panel should work the same way.
I initially had a problem though, as my top level directory above the numbers clip dirs was not CONTENTS. It had to be renamed to avoid conflict with other CONTENTS clip set in the same project. So the media browser refused to load the spanned clips together, but would allow me to load a single clip. It wasn't until I guessed, and renamed my top dir back to CONTENTS that things worked and the the View as dropdown showed the magic Canon XF option.
I suggest this implied requirement be made clear in the manual, noting that the top dir must be named CONTENTS for this to work. Yes, I believe that's the MXF standard, but many people will rename their parent directory so multiple cards can be copied into the same project directory, instead of having yet another single-entry directory above the CONTENTS directory, like CARD1 CARD2 etc.
I beieve that the software is at fault and should be changed - if it can see mutliple numbered MXF dirs at the same level, it should simply deal with them. I know you can't fix that, but please warn people.
Anyway, thanks again for your reply. It got me on the correct path to a solution.
Brett

Premiere cs6/cc confusing spanned-clips Canon C300

Hey
Bit of a strange one...
We have Adobe Creative Cloud installed on 5 suites (resently updated to CC from CS6) when using CS6 we had a problem when ingesting footage from the Canon C300. When ingesting spanned clips CS6 seems to get the order of the clips mixed up, so the start of the clip will be around the middle. There is no jump in the timecode, so it would appear CS6 is just placing the spanned video files around the wrong way, but the metadata (where a assume the timecode is stored) is correct.
I thought upgrading to CC would solve this but it appears it hasn't. I just installed CC on my home machine which has never had CS6 on it and this probelm hasn't occurred, which meant when I opened up an edit that I started at work it had all been shifted around! Very Annoying!!!
Has anyone came across the same issue?? Seems strange it has happen on all our machines. I've tried uninstalling CS6 and then install CC but doesn't seem to work, would appricate any help on this
Thanks
Chris

Hi,
just to underline your point: we have had the same issues since CS6 and it persists until today (CC 7.01).
What makes things even stranger is that I had a 55 min+ clip (from a Canon C300), spanned into 11 MXF segments.
When I imported it via the Media Browser from a portable hard drive it came in as a single clip maintaining the correct order of the segments. I then copied the hard drive's contents to our SAN (maintaining the file structure, of course).
Then I imported the clip again, it came as one clip like before - but the order of the segments within the clip was completely random, every 5:15 min there was a visible "cut" within the clip.
So maybe PPro uses some hidden metadata of the files to determine their order and those metadata get lost on their way to the SAN. I can only speculate.
I tried creating new projects, using a windows machine instead of a Mac, but to no avail.
Our temporary (yet annoying) solution is to "destroy" the files structure and then import and concatenate the segments manually.
Are you on a SAN?
Manuel

Relinking spanned clips

I have received a project edited on PPro 7.1.0 with a number of Canon C300 spanned clips. I have PPro 7.2.1. When I relink the clips the spanned clips link incorrectly. In fact all the span clips have incorrect timecode. The original editor on PPro 7.1.0 brought in the span clips as individual clips with sequential timecode. When I import the clips they come in as clips all of the same length but the time code is way off eg a clip that should start at 01:01:31:17 starts at 01:17:18:18. This is really less than satisfactory and the fact that we need to hand this project back and forth is really going to make life very difficult. Adobe and Canon need to sort this span clip thing out. It's been going on for over a year now at I'm about to start loosing it... a trip to the post office might calm my nerves.

OK... well it would seem that no one is that interested in this and no one from Abode is willing to help here which is very disappointing.
Some further developments:
We are working in 25p PAL btw on apple macs
1. Both machines now have identical versions of Premiere Pro
2. Both machines have identical import settings in preferences... are there any other settings hidden anywhere
Importing mxf footage using Media Browser, shot Canon C300 running 1.0.9.1.00 firmware
On my import of span clips I get the first of the spans being the full clip with the correct timecode. The other spans are also imported as full clips, but with the timecode starting at the beginning of the final span
The import on the other editors machine is giving a very different result
He gets each of the spans as individual clips with each clip being 5:15:21(PAL), which as far as I understand being the maximum span length with the final clip in the span group being shorter than the 5:15:21
The other interesting thing here is that there are network drives involved at the other editors end and importing from the network drive give slightly different results to importing from a drive via USB3
While all clips come in as separate clips... no spanning... the clips imported from the network drive are correct sequentuially correct
The clips from the USB 3 drive will only play the first span of the clip although they are labelled spans xxxx01, xxxx02, xxxx03, etc
As far as I know my footage was exported to a USB drive from the network drive at the other editors end
I have imported footage into a new project and sent that project back to the editor... when he relinks the footage he gets the same results as described above
I am working on a new mac pro... the other editor is on a iMac... the only thing I haven't checked is the version of OSX that he is using
This now getting very tedious... something that should be very straight forward is now taking hours of time to try and sort out.
Can someone please help... yes I'm looking at you Mr. Adobe
cheers
Pete

CS6.0.2 Update No Fix For AVCHD Spanned Clips - Workarounds?

While I try to avoid Spanned Clips as much as possible due to a history with Premiere importing them, for event coverage we still get them and I just can't figure out how to make them work in Premeire CS6 on OS X. I see lots of posts about this and would like to know if there is a fix that does not require purchasing another product (like MTS Merge $35).
We are using AVCHD footage from Pansonic cameras and if it spanned, the sound will be missing for much or all or the clip.
I have tried using the Media Browser to import the entire AVCHD folder.
I have tried using Panasonics AVCHD Viewer application to import the footage (switches wrapper to .mt2s instead of .mts).
I have tried transcoding to new codec (Quicktime and VLC will play the MTS file correctly but output loses audio sync).
Ugh, this is terrible. Has anyone else found a workaround?

Unfortunately this is not a spanned clip problem with Adobe or Panasonic. This issue does come up from time to time.
Be sure when you pull the card from your camcorder, you LOCK IT immediately. Then it becomes impossible to change anything on the card purposely or inadvertantly (and as you are aware, changing anything - structure, file names, ANYTHING - on the card will blow the whole operation, so locking it is perfect). Also, sometimes Mac users have problems when they fail to lock their cards, because Mac OS immediately starts writing files to the card if it's not locked.
When you're using the Media Browser in PPro, be certain that you are viewing the clips in AVCHD mode (there's a dropdown option for this right there in the Media Browser). If you're importing individual clips from a single continuous recording, you're NOT in AVCHD mode, and this will always cause the problem you are describing.
I don't mean to lay this out as "you're doing it wrong" but unfortunately this is all very well documented at this point, and whenever there is a problem with spanned clips, it is 100% of the time due to a user that renamed something, moved files, or otherwise didn't follow the complete rules of AVCHD management. I don't normally use a term like 100% (tend to prefer 99.9%) but I say 100% because it is absolute in this case.

Another spanned clips bug?

I've read that Adobe recently fixed a spanned clips bug. Well here's another one (at least on my system):
I have several spanned clips recorded with my Sony FS700 (MTS-files in AVCHD-container) and my Panasonic P2-camera (P2 MXF-files). When using Adobe Media Encoder (AME) to convert to ProRes, the spanned clips are joined right, but AME encodes the same material several times. The result is several copies of the exact same encoded material written to disk.
Here's how it works:
In one case, my camera had split my recording into 4 individual files. I expected AME to a) either join them and output one long file or b) not to join them and just output 4 individual ProRes files. Instead I ended up with 4 joined identical 32 GB files on disk. I did it again and noticed that AME actually encoded the same material 4 times in a row. What a waste of time and space …
When using Sony MTS-files, AME creates different filenames for each clip (0001.mov, 0002.mov, 0003.mov. When using Panasonic MXF-files, AME put _1, _2, _3, etc. at the end of the filenames.
In my opinion, AME should have a tick box where you can chose "join spanned files" or not. If it had such a box, it would chose to leave it off most of the time. That way it would be much easier to check if AME has converted all the files or not. It would be 32 files in = 32 files out, not 32 files in = 2 spanned files + x small files out … Nowadays, I have to doublecheck everything before formatting my cards.
I'm using Adobe Media Encoder v. 7.2.0.43 (64-bit) and OSX Mavericks 10.9.1 on a late 2013 Macbook Pro 15-inch Retina 2,3 GHz i7 16GB RAM 512 SSD.

Jim Simon, let me explain:
1. When I drag MTS-clips into AME, the software generates several copies of the same spanned clip during conversion. (They pop up in the queue while AME is converting).
2. When I drag MXF-clips into AME, the software generates several copies of the same spanned clip before conversion. In the screenshot, which was taken after conversion, you'll see that the file numbers begin with 0018, 0019, 0019, 0019, 0019, and then jump to 0023, 0023. Well, what I dragged in was 0018, 0019, 0020, 0021, 0022, 0023, 0024 etc. So I believe AME skips filenames that are elements in a spanned clip, and then multiplies the the process all by itself. But, yes, I could manually examine the queue and erase identical clips after I drag files in. But that is just not a good way of working …
So, AME behaves differently with spanned MXF and MTS-files, but none of them are handled right.

Canon spanned clips - problem with Premiere CC 2014 v 8.1 (and NOT in CC v 7.2.2)

Hello,
I have a spanned XF100 clip (3 clips total 13:50).
I have the whole directory content (XML,...) of the CF card.
I use the Media Browser of Adobe Premiere to import the videostreams.
Everything worked fine with Premiere CC v 7.2.2
I needed to upgrade to Premiere CC 2014 v 8.2 as the new Speedgrade didnt work with the old version of Premiere.
Suddenly the spanned clip does not playback smoothly. In fact, if I place the timer to a specific point, it takes up to 60 sec until the picture changes in the "Programm window" and doesnt playback at all. Only the sounds works, but the video is only a still picture.
This only happens with the spanned clip. All the other "single" clips are working fine.
I do exactly the same thing in CC and CC2014. In CC it works perfectly and in CC2014 it does not.
Any idea?
Does CC2014 interpret the spanned clips differently?
thanks for your help!
Manfred

I have a similar issue with XF305 spanned clips in a sequence mixed with 5dMarkIII and old SD DV footage running very slowly intermittently on 8.1. I had worked case 186016889 this weekend for this issue and the engineer renamed the following folders to _old and PR recreated them. I'm running on Win 7 Pro latest SP, i7 920, 48 GB RAM and Nvidia GTX 480.
%appdata%\Adobe\Premiere Pro to %appdata%\Adobe\Premiere Pro
Libraries\Documents\Adobe to Libraries\Documents\Adobe
This seemed to help for a while, but the nature of the slowdown has been from a few minutes to many hours. I did finally notice that I had up to three orphaned PR processes that were still doing I/O. Things get better now for a while after I kill the processes. I've seen other issues with the new version where edit audio in Audition doesn't refresh the waveform after an Audition save and removed and reinstalled PR last night because the edit audition of the next clip overwrote that audio with the previous clips file.
So I have a fresh/clean install and it's still intermittently leaving orphaned processes and running slow. I think I can get it to happen consistently when I send the audio to Audition, but I'm doing an export now so I can go back to the previous version. I'll do a quick test to see if it's consistent before I downgrade so I can re-due the last three days work.

Spanned Clips

Hi,
I'm running Final Cut 5.1.4, and I'm trying to import some HD files. When I try to do that, almost all of them come up with at least one clip in the folder reading as "spanned." I took a quick look to see how to fix this problem, and the answers I found and could understand don't seem to work.
Can anyone tell me why I am having this problem, and explain how to get these spanned files to import?

Kevan, for future reference....
P2 cards are formatted with a special format that has a 4GB limit. So even if you shoot one loooooong take, it will break the clip up into several spanned clips on one card. But importing them into FCP should stitch them together.
Odd that he had to treat them as separate files...
Shane

P2 Spanned Clip Timecode Goes Past Midnight

I'm in a bit of a pickle here. I have a two hour show shot on four Panasonic 3700s and one 3000. All shooting 1080p/24 AVC-Intra on P2 cards. The timecode is TOD, and all the cameras and the sound were locked on the same TC. Unfortunately the show started late, and finished after midnight, and the TC reset to 00:00:00:00 3/4 of the way through four 2-hour spanned clips. Obviously the TOD should have been set 12 hours earlier and we could have avoided the whole problem, but thanks to all the overtime and meal penalties we can't afford a time machine at this point.
The P2CMS software has no trouble connecting up the spanned clips, but FCP refuses to do it. All of the spanned clips that reset to 0 are listed as multiple incomplete clips. Can anyone think of a way to get FCP to connect those spanned clips other than converting them all to DPX in P2CMS?

Solved!
David Wulzen gave me this idea in relation to a different issue he was having.
http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/193/873780
I went through and changed the start timecode in the Contents/Clip/*****.xml files for all 70 of the clips I wanted to span, and now FCP joins them up with no problem. This saves a lot of importing and exporting time. When you're looking at over 650 GB to copy back and forth, the time really adds up.

Spanned clip

Hello everyone!
I had shot two videos using Panasonic AGHVX 200 camera...I had used two P2 cards... I copied the contents folder as well as the lastclip.txt file for both the cards on a Hard-Drive... But when I am trying Log and Transfer these files in FCP, the transfer window shows just one spanned clip... The two videos were captured on just one P2 card and the other card has no videos....
I had read all the previous threads about spanned clips but I could not find a solution to my problem...
I would be glad if someone could help me out in finding a solution to this problem.
Thanks,
Kanika

One word for ya: Raylight.
I had the same problem. I tried P2CMS, renaming, and any trick I could think of. Raylight to the rescue. It creates a "pointer" MOV file to the actual P2 media and then you simply import the Raylighted MOV files into FCP. No data loss, and way quicker than a P2 transfer.
Well worth the money.
http://www.dvfilm.com/raylight/
Cheers.

I imported about 300 RAW images yesterday and worked with them for about an hour. iPhoto locked up on me and I rebooted. After I did the event icon is now gray and it says there are no photos. I know the photos are there. Any idea how I can recover them?

I imported about 300 RAW images yesterday and worked with them for about an hour. iPhoto locked up on me and I rebooted. After I did the event icon for that event is now gray and it says there are no photos. I know the photos are there. Any idea how I can recover them?

a best practice to is to never have any computer program (including iPhoto) delete the photos from the card but to import the photos and keep them and then after at least one successful backup cycle has completed and then reformat the card -- I use three very large (32 GB) cards in rotation so I do not reformat for typically a year or more giving me one more long term backup of my photos
Back up your iPhoto library, Depress and hold the option (alt) and command keys and launch iPhoto - rebuild your iPhoto library database
LN

Importing a lot of video clips from a Sony camera to FCE; during the Log and Transfer process, is there a way to add multiple clips to the browser instead of one at a time?

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Import (XF-300) MXF spanned clips in 5.5 - how?

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