IMX four channels audio export

Welcome aboard. You can accomplish that with Roles in FCP X. You'll assign a "Role" for your different elements, and then create a Role export present (stored in the root of your events folder) to do what you like.

Here is the timeline, with viewing roles:




Here is what your Role settings will look like for export:



(now obviously you can name and arrange roles as you like, this was just a quick example.)


Since you are just getting started, I would highly recommend that you get some training that covers the basics for FCP X even though you are an experienced editor, it will be well worth the few dollars you'll spend. Ripple Training's is excellent and so is Larry Jordan's training. It will help you get up to speed quickly on the methodology of FCP X, which can at some times see foreign to experienced editors.

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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[Michael Sanders] "Hadn't thought of doing it that way but it would still be really handy if Apple provided a way of selecting the mix in the roles export window."

What do you mean by "selecting the mix", exactly?

Thank you!
I could export the 4 audio tracks ProRes file. That worked great, more or less the same as it used to work on FCP7. On FCP7 I used to export a ProRes422 file just as well, slip it onto an IMX four channels sequence within FPC7 and export using current settings. it seems I can't do it now within FCPX as I can't find any IMX preset and I need to pass it to Compressor. Now I'm trying to find the settings on the new Compressor to get the IMX with 4 channels, so far I only got a stereo pair with full downmix.
Regards

Fabrizio D'Agnano
Rome, Italy

I could export IMX 625/30Mbps PAL choosing 4.1 as an audio option from the Compressor settings sending the FCPX timeline. The destination channels play correctly following the roles I assigned in FCPX, I'll see if it passes the Quality Check at the satellite channel, I guess it should. To see the four channels in FCPX I only found the way of breaking apart the clips items. Curious, while the whole clip is PAL 1080i, once broken apart, the audio tracks are labeled as NTSC 1080p and it seems I can't modify them. I have to study some more to find a way to reverse the "break apart clips items" in case I need it. By the way, in these three or four days of getting acquainted to the new editor I met two complete crashes on my 2011 15" MBP, maybe Compressor related or graphic card related, with the screen showing crazy lines and of course the MBP becoming irresponsive. Everything was back in place after the restart, however I had about the same number of crashes in the last two years and about 30 documentaries produced with the old FCP7 and SL. Also I had rare dropped frames during playback, but nothing serious.

Fabrizio D'Agnano
Rome, Italy

Thank you Jeremy.
Where do I find the "pass through"? When I create the Compressor IMX setting I can't find it in the audio options.
Regards

Fabrizio D'Agnano
Rome, Italy

Thank you Jeremy.
It doesn't seem to work. I modified the export setting as you suggested and tried to first export the FCPX timeline and then a ProRes file with the four tracks, but both the compressed files show a stereo pair.

Fabrizio D'Agnano
Rome, Italy

Thank you Jeremy, it works fine!

Fabrizio D'Agnano
Rome, Italy

Fabrizio,

I plead my ignorance, how did you export IMX out of Compressor? Also where is the IMX preset in FCP?

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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

Yes, you have to make your own.
You have to build a new custom preset, then, into the inspector window, under the "encoder" tab, open the "settings" window after "video", and choose the MPEG IMX you need.
IN FCPX, the IMX settings appears as an export option if you placed an IMX clip on the timeline as the first clip, this making the project IMX (I couldn't do it from the presets).
Regards

Fabrizio D'Agnano
Rome, Italy

I tried again and it works for me. It works if you choose a SD 720x576 (PAL in my case) setting for your project. The if you put HD clips on the timeline and choose "share", export media" the IMX settings will appear among the video codecs. It seems to me, given I am not an expert so far and maybe I am missing something or have not completely understood the workflow, that projects and export settings are limited outside compressor.

Fabrizio D'Agnano
Rome, Italy

Ahh I got it. I didn't understand that the IMX Spec is only for SD material, see here (the FCP 7 manual coincidently):

http://documentation.apple.com/en/finalcutpro/professionalformatsandworkflo...

And from the FCP X Glossary "IMX A standard-definition (SD), all-I-frame MPEG-2 format stored on tape, XDCAM optical disc, or disk drive. Some IMX decks can play back and convert formats such as Digital Betacam, Betacam SX, and Betacam SP to IMX. The data rate of IMX can be set to 30, 40, or 50 Mbps."


Therefore you have to create a SD project at NTSC 720x486 or PAL 720x576 (or anamorphic versions of those) to SEE it as an export option. If you start with a HD project, you should make it a compound clip and then paste it into an SD project to see down convert.

So correct me if I am wrong but it looks to me that FCP X already does all you need it to do by selecting roles in Share > Export.



And the resulting file with 4 tracks of audio just as specified.



This is in fact what you were trying to do, correct?

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T. Payton
OneCreative, Albuquerque

[T. Payton] "This is in fact what you were trying to do, correct?"

That's it, T Payton, has to be SD Project first (or SD compound clip in Event).

Good find.

Now if we could can get this in MXF direct from the timeline! ;)

Jeremy

[T. Payton] "Correct me if I am wrong, but is that what I showed? "

It's an IMX.mov, but an IMX.MXF would be great (or p2 MXF, or other flavors of MXF).

With FCP Legend, you can export straight to IMX or XDCam with Sony's free XDCam Transfer software for FCP7 right out of the Export menu like this:



and results in this:



Can't quite do that with FCP X, yet.

I'm sure it'll get there eventually.

Jeremy

[T. Payton] "So what is the difference between the .mov and the .mxf (besides of course the extension)?"

MXF is a container, like .mov. It can house all kinds of frame rates/sizes and codecs, most of which can be proprietary codecs like ProRes or AVC-Intra.

It stands for Material eXchange Format. It was quite literally designed to hold and exchange modern file based media by SMPTE.

The MXF container itself is open, which means you aren't bound by any one developer or manufacturer provided you also have an open codec. MXF is used extensively in broadcast post/archive workflows, many modern broadcast tapeless cameras shoot to an MXF wrapper.

It is platform agnostic and makes sense for modern file based workflows. QuickTime is dying, not so much the container, but the API behind it. This means that NLEs will be restricted to decoding .mov material in an old and creaky 32bit structure. MXF skirts this as it's a more modern architecture, and also has cool capabilities such as built in metadata structures.

For all of its faults, QuickTime has been ubiquitous and user friendly, I feel that should change for a few reasons and hopefully MXF should get better attention.

MXF is not perfect, but the more that it catches on in post workflows, the more development resources can be thrown at it. Avid uses MXF as its underlying media container, but avid does it's best to over complicate it and hide those underpinnings from the user as much as possible.

I am curious to see what happens with FCPX and MXF and the MacOS in general. With Mountain Lion, AVCHD Transport Stream file structures are now directly available to the OS for viewing. It'd be cool if we could get this same functionality with MXF files.

Wikipedia has good info and this is a good read if you like this sort of thing: http://tech.ebu.ch/docs/techreview/trev_291-devlin.pdf

Jeremy

[T. Payton] "Thanks for the information, that is great to know. So have you posted some feedback to Apple about this workflow?"

I have been rattling the cage for better MXF support in FCP for a very long time. Panasonic and Sony have done a decent job of supporting their flavors of MXF for FCP, but better support would be...better. ;) And there's more to MXF than P2 and XDCam.

I have third party tools from MXF4mac to help me in FCP Legend, and it appears they are developing a few for FCPX as well, but some of them aren't available yet.

Also, Apple has announced better native MXF support, so I will be curious to see what this brings before rattling the cage any further. I have high hopes!

Jeremy