Handling 50p XDCAM-EX footage in FCP

The Sony EX3 is a versatile piece of kit, given that it's switchable between PAL and NTSC areas, and can shoot 720p as well as 1080i.

One of the exciting functions of shooting in 720p is the ability to undercrank or overcrank, in other words to change the frame rate between 1 and 50fps (or 1 and 60fps for NTSC areas).

Shooting 50fps provides all the information you need in order to create good looking slow motion effects in post. However, with XDCAM-EX footage it's not quite as simple as it appears, so after mucking around a bit, this is the best way I've found of handling it.

The XDCAM-EX codec is a Long-GOP codec, essentially meaning that the information needed to describe one particular frame may come from a preceding frame, due to the intra-frame (or temporal) compression used by this particular codec.

Long-GOP codecs clearly provide headaches to the developers of NLE's. For this reason, Final Cut Pro 7 struggles to 'see' all frames shot in 720p50 XDCAM-EX.

By contrast, creating slow motion effects in FCP using footage shot 720p50 DVCPRO HD was simple. Creating a 720p25 DVCPRO HD sequence and placing the 720p50 footage on the timeline was sufficient for FCP to recognise and playback every frame. The resulting effect was very good looking slow motion (at exactly half speed obviously).

However, with XDCAM-EX footage, it's basically more of a faff. Here's how I do it..

1) Import 720p50 XDCAM-EX (normally using Sony's transfer software running alongside FCP7).
2) Create a new 720p50 XDCAM-EX sequence.
3) Place footage on timeline (Note at this stage the footage will play back in real time and you will only see 1 out of very 2 frames shot.)
4) Export the sequence using QT conversion > Image Sequence (Note this will export every single frame of video to a chosen folder in .png format.)
5) Open QuickTime Pro 7 (Note you will need the Pro version)
6) Import 'Image Sequence' by selecting the first of the frames you exported, and when prompted select 25fps.
7) Save a QT movie (using your target codec of your choice.. 1080p25 XDCAM-EX for example)
8) Import the QT movie in to FCP.

The results are pretty good.

Dave Brewis