How to preview Avid Media Composer’s MXF files for free without Media Composer

Here’s a handy little tip for viewing and previewing Avid Media Composer .MXF files outside of Media Composer itself. It came up via Twitter recently and it’s one of those little tips that I can’t believe I didn’t know before now. It’s mainly for those moments when you wonder … “what’s in the file that is called OS020705A01.CBA36E04F7E03DB.mxf?” Is a human really supposed to be able to read those things?

My NAB 2012 Post|Production World classes

I’m very excited to once again be teaching several classes at the 2012 NAB Post|Production world conference. It’s going to be much busier this year than years past as I’m teaching five total classes from Monday through Wednesday. If you aren’t going to NAB or attending the conference then please forgive this self-indulgent post about those classes that I’m leading. Hey, I’m just happy to be here at all.

Baselight for Final Cut Pro is one of the most powerful legacy FCP grading plugins ever

At NAB 2011 FilmLight surprised most everyone with a preview of their Baselight for Final Cut Pro plugin. It was surprising because I think many people expected them to release a lower cost, Mac-based version of their flagship Baselight color grading tool. Instead they showed a different strategy that looks to revolve around very powerful color grading plugins and interoperability with the full Baselight systems. The FCP plugin had been in beta for a while and was just released. For $995 Baselight for Final Cut Pro can be yours.

ARRI’s DNxHD Alexa update, Sorenson Squeeze Pro and OP this, OP that

ARRI has begun to ship its DNxHD update for their Alexa camera. This announcement that the Alexa would get DNxHD as an onboard recording option (besides ProRes) was welcome news to post-production people like myself who use Avid Media Composer. While ProRes is supported in Avid both by AMA linking and direct MXF creation (in the Media Composer version 6 on Mac that is) DNxHD is Avid’s own in-house codec and is a perfect option for compressed hi-def media. But ARRI’s onboard DNxHD recording uses an MXF format that’s a bit different than Avid’s. Read on for a discussion of why that is (and lots of OP).

What’s happening at NAB 2012?

The big National Association of Broadcasters convention is just over a month away. It’s a week of fun, fellowship, education, parties and more gear than your brain can handle. There’s a ton of both official and unofficial events that happen during the day and in the evening. There’s not really an official list anywhere and as I’ve been trying to compile a list of my own I thought I’d post that list of events here on the Editblog. I’ll continue updating this list as the show draws near. If you have anything to add to the list please put them in the comments below or email them to editblog [at] me.com

The C300 short Hustle and some before and after images

A number of filmmakers involved in the Boston Creative Pro User Group got together in January to give the new Canon C300 a test. Their result is this short piece called Hustle. New camera tests on Vimeo are a dime a dozen these days but after speaking with the BOSCPUG folks involved in post I got a few before and after color grading stills. As an amateur colorist myself, I always enjoy seeing these types of before and after images. Not so much to analyze the technical quality of the image and a camera’s latitude but more to look at the creative decision in the grade. I hope you enjoy seeing them too.

Tip Tuesday: Disable a clip in the Avid Media Composer timeline

In honor of TipTuesday over on Twitter I thought I’d share this simple Avid Media Composer tip that I use to counter the lack of a clip enable / disable feature in Media Composer. It’s all about saving an effect and getting easy access to that saved effect. There’s actually several tips in here that can be used for most all effects in Media Composer.

Testing the 7toX Final Cut Pro 7 to Final Cut Pro X conversion

When Apple released the latest Final Cut Pro X update there was a very important 3rd party utility released right alongside the 10.0.3 update that finally allowed the importing of legacy FCP7 projects into FCPX. It wasn’t entirely surprising that it was Intelligent Assistance releasing 7toX for Final Cut Pro. I say that because they had already created Xto7 (to move projects from FCPX to FCP7) and are arguably the best company for creating high-quality XML workflow tools for the FCP universe. There’s been tons of blog posts about 7toX for Final Cut Pro since its introduction but most of them are nothing more than a here it is here’s the link kind of thing, including one of my own. Many have taken a simple sequence to try this conversion but my thought was to throw everything at 7toX for Final Cut Pro and see how well it did ... or didn’t work.

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