I hope this is the right forum for this question. Since it deals with XDCAM, I figure it's relevant.

Anyone with any experience working with XDCAM HD video in After Effects? Does the native XDCAM codec work well within After Efffects, or should I ingest shots that I know I will use in AE with another codec?

from Avid MC, i always use "same as source" that is DNxHD.

from FCP, i use either : QT PNG or QT Animation or Uncompressed 8 or 10 bit.
there's a bit of color change in FCP to AE.

:)

I'm not sure that AE supports XDCAM MXF files - I've not tried it directly though. I do know that Premiere doesn't support them directly without plugin support or a Matrox Axio system (which does support MXF in both Premiere and AE). I have an Axio system and use XDCAM HD MXF files in boths apps fine.

Silly me, Paul. Since I use Final Cut Pro, I assume everyone else does too. That's a bad assumption. The MXF file wrapper is not a problem within the Mac version of After Effects. The XDCAM Transfer software allows Final Cut and AE to see the file as a Quicktime movie.

I was mostly wondering if the long-GOP MPEG worked well within AE. AE kind of works on a frame-by-frame basis, and as we all know, XDCAM MPEG doesn't really work that way.

I haven't had any problems with it, other than taking forever to render and I'm on an octo with 8 gigs ram. I usually render out of AE as animation, but I've been using pro res a bit now too, since I have my XDCAM timelines in FCP to render Pro Res.