Avid MXF Atom with J2K or H264

[Vininski]

I am looking for the exact same thing now to, a proxy under 10Mbit/s would be great. Everything I've tried in ffmpeg so far has not been readable in Avid.

[emcodem]

If i have time to play with that, does one need Interplay for it or can this be reproduced in a normal MCP? Is it like i can just create the file using ffmpeg, drag it into my timeline and i see the problem or do i need some special knowledge about avid an proxies?

[Vininski]

Normal MCP is all you need, its in v8+ at least and you can just get a trial version (which I found a post explaining how to reset, very useful for testing)

EDIT: See images here for the options when transcoding in Avid: http://24p.com/wordpress/

As far as I can tell it's just Avid needing a very strict spec of the H.264 proxy of which I only know that MCP and the Avid Media Toolkit (does not seem to be freely available) can create.

I did actually manage to get a DNxHR LB file (480x270 @2461kbps) working out of ffmpeg using:

ffmpeg -i ""Clip0012.MXF"" -vf scale=480:270:lanczos -an -metadata project="MY PROJECT" -metadata material_package_name="MY CLIP" -c:v dnxhd -profile:v dnxhr_lb -pix_fmt yuv422p -c:a pcm_s16le -f mxf_opatom "V:\1\MY_CLIP_v1.mxf" -vn -metadata project="MY PROJECT" -ar 48000 -metadata material_package_name="MY CLIP" -f mxf_opatom "V:\1\MY_CLIP_a1.mxf"

But I need it to split all the tracks which differ per input media, so I think I need to create a script and run that in the command. It simply can't beat H.264 compression though so I'm keen to see if it's possible.

[emcodem]

Nice, so we already have a 2,5 mbit version working
I did not yet have time to test and play, but on the avid supported formats list, they state that they support sony xdcamhd proxy. Can anyone confirm that this kind of proxy can be loaded?
It will take me until monday at least until i can try myself.

[emcodem]

Another way of getting this to work is to try to replicate exactly the same as Avid does when exporting a proxy.
An Exported 2.5MBit Proxy from Avid shows that the mxf was created by

AAFSDK (Win64) 2.0.2.10019.316

But there is only one version of the AAFSDK (Version 1.something) available on the internet, it has not been maintained for many years.
The AAFSDK that Avid uses is a true open-source product, so they need to provide access to the Version that they deliver with MCP as per point 2 in the open-source license the AAFSDK underlies:
https://opensource.org/docs/definition.php

Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost, preferably downloading via the Internet without charge.

I had a look in the install dir of MCP but did not find the typical licenses and references to source code for all OpenSource tools they distribute.

Is anyone here in a position to ask some technical person @Avid about this?

[emcodem]

Thanks to @momocampo i was able to play with a MCP installation.
Can anyone confirm that this works and also this is what we are looking for in this thread? ... what i did is to drag it from windows explorer into my Project bin and hold the Alt key so the file was "linked". After that, i was able to play the file in preview and also drag it into timeline.

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -i %INPUTFILE% -s 720x576 -c:v libx264 -g 12 -profile:v baseline -pix_fmt yuv420p -c:a pcm_s16le %OUTPUTFILE%.mxf

Note that a op1a is created instead of opatom.

As i work with Avid the first time i don't understand the full requirement, what it means to work with proxy, all i can currently do is to find out how to generate a file format that Avid is willing to process.

[Ghtais]

Hi Emcodem

I think that the purpose of this thread is to produce a ready to go H264 OP-atom for AVID.
As I understand, you have linked your H264 with AMA link function. AMA link works with almost all video files but the goal here, is to produce optimized media for AVID. To be optimized, the media should be I frame only. Are you sure that your ffmpeg code produce I frame ?
also it should be wrapped in OP-atom container.
After that, you can test your file by put it in the "Avid MediaFiles/MXF/1" folder (at the root of your hard drive) and run Media composer. It should scan the file and create his data base, then drag and drop the mdb file in a bin to see your media in Avid. If the file isn't Avid compliant, the scan failed and gives you an error.

I hope it's a little bit more clear for you

Bye

[emcodem]

Hey ghatis,
thanks for clearing that up. What i did is to try to reproduce the xdcam proxy, it occurs to me that for xdcam, avid built in very special support. I am not sure if creating a typical opatom us the right way for creating the requires h264 proxy, i have the feeling avid intended other ways for proxy related stuff...

[Ghtais]

If the file is not OP-atom you have to rewrappe it in AVID with the "consolidate" function. It is a good way to see if your H264 is Avid compliant
Next week i will take the time to see if the Xdcam proxy is AVID compliant. At ma office, we work a lot with Sony XDCam prodisc but we never use the proxy

[Vininski]

I just tested Emcodem's code for the proxy and while it does AMA-Link successfully the consolidate failed.

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