How to View Avid MXF transcodes on Mac w/o Avid

[Jordan Livingston]

I'm currently transcoding dailies to Avid format via REDRocket-powered REDCine-X. Unfortunately, I do not have any Avid software installed on this system. Is there any way to view playback of the MXF files on my system without installing Avid?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Best,

- Jordan

[MichaelP]

Do you just not want to install Media Composer, or don't want to buy one? You can always download the full functioning 30 day trial of Media Composer from avid.com if that helps.

Michael

[Jordan Livingston]

I'm a Final Cut editor myself, but lately, I have been interfacing with more and more Avid clients. I will likely buy in the very near future, but it's a pretty big purchase for a freelance user without any real immediate "need."

In any case, I did not know there was a free trial! Thank you so much for pointing that out. That will certainly help me to verify that my transcodes are working properly in the short-term...

Thanks again!

Best,

- Jordan

[sander kamp]

There are two plugins for quicktime that can do the trick. One is from Calibrated software, the Calibrated MXF import for OSX is $90,- but is for one machine only so you lose the license when you upgrade your hardware, which sucks.

The other is from MXF4mac and is 399 Euro (ouch).

I first went the AVID demo way but to be honest it is very cumbersome. AVID doesn't just let you drag and drop files in the timeline but needs a folder structure and then you need to proper import and copy files and then link.

Finally I bought the Calibrated MXF import plugin and it does the job, namely play back mxf files as if they were quicktime files. Beware though that video and audio is separated so you can't play them back at the same time.

[MichaelP]

Import MXF files into Avid MediaFiles/MXF/1 folder
Import AAF files into bin
load and play

[Jordan Livingston]

The Calibrated MXF Import fool is very helpful! Even in the free demo mode (which only allows you to view :30 seconds of a give clip), the tool is excellent for my purposes. I just need to see ensure that the shots look right, are in the right aspect ratio, color space, aren't dropping frames, etc. Thanks again for the suggestion.

It seems there really should be some sort of "free" Avid MXF viewer, just like Apple makes their ProRes codec available. I can't imagine that Avid isn't aware they have third party clients and other non-editors who need the ability to to review materials encoded in their file format...

- Jordan

[Russ Campbell]

Calibrated MXF works fine for me too. The 30sec trial limit is fine to quickly check that the files transcoded properly. Thanks for the suggestions.

[Tom Gough]

Thank you Jordan and Sander :)

This is very useful indeed