Viewing C300 footage

[Thierry Humeau]

Hello,

I am working on a production guide for a group of about 50 people (journos, producers, editors, cameramen, APs, ....) who will work on a daily news show all shot on C300s and am looking at Canon's XF Utility alternatives for viewwing and managing Canon XF media. Canon's XF Utlity is fine but is very limiting in the way it works and the necessity to access XF Media folders as a whole and not be able to directly view MXF files. Any alternatives out there? I have used the VLC player with mixed success (audio sometimes does not play on some machines).

[Jon Roemer]

Originally Posted by Thierry Humeau

Hello,

I am working on a production guide for a group of about 50 people (journos, producers, editors, cameramen, APs, ....) who will work on a daily news show all shot on C300s and am looking at Canon's XF Utility alternatives for viewwing and managing Canon XF media. Canon's XF Utlity is fine but is very limiting in the way it works and the necessity to access XF Media folders as a whole and not be able to directly view MXF files. Any alternatives out there? I have used the VLC player with mixed success (audio sometimes does not play on some machines).

Don't know if this helps you but bringing the footage in FCP X, FCP X will re-wrap it as a Quicktime file, *.MOV. You can then copy those files and view them via Quicktime or any NLE without having to have the card structure intact.

The only time it didn't work for me was when a client was using a very old version of the Mac OS (they ended up using VLC player in that case.)

Here's a blog post I did about working this way: Quick & Easy: Batch Canon C300 MXF to MOV via FCP X | Learning to See .

FCP X also has a backup process option, "Camera Archive," which can archive the original media if that's something you are looking to do: Canon C300: FCP X vs. XF Utility for Backup/Archive | Learning to See . It's similar to XF Utility in that it is acting to keep the card structure intact but is a good deal less clunky in how it works.

[Bob Willis]

You might also look at Imagine Products, Shotput Pro and HDVU. A good way to download cards and view material. Red Giant has a product in Beta called BulletProof that also looks like it would be of help in the future.