I contacted nablet AMA support yesterday, their reply was;

"We will release an XAVC S plugin within the next two weeks. 

This plugin supports volume and clip linking, timecode and extracts a variety of meta data. It will also work on on elder versions of Media Composer down to v7.0.7"

 

I received an email today from nablet, the XAVC S plug-in has been released but I was surprised to see they are charging for this one.... $89.00.

Does anybody know how this works, Sony use to write the plug-ins for Avid and other edit software.  Did Sony license nablet to do that task.  I think this is the first XAVC plugin to have a price tag attached, will we see more of this in the future?

Will Avid fix their native XAVC-S plugin to be able to transcode and read time-code? Or does Sony restrict Avid due to licensing restrictions?

nablet plugin site;  http://www.nablet.com/ama-plugins/nablet-xavcs-ama-plugin/?mc_cid=8e069a0d37&mc_eid=08f1f19e7a

 

Our eagerly awaited XAVC S Plugin for Avid Media Access is now available for just $89 (US)! It allows fast linking of XAVC S volumes and clips for native editing in Avid Media Composer. It detects time codes and a variety of metadata. It supports Media Composer versions 8.x up to the latest release, as well as version 7.0.7. The plugin is available for Windows 7 and later, and for Mac version 10.10 and later.

Drastic.TV has updated MediaReactor to handle XAVC-S as well. The single plug-in (not the entire MediaReactor package) is currently on sale through Eye Scream Factory for $49, and it runs on MC 6.5 and later. The link is http://eyescreamfactory.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=065a9f2583e0e581a6da4492d&id=817a879be3&e=66b8590bd0. Please note that I've not used either this or Nablets and can't make commentary on either one.

Personally if you're going to be on the latest version of MC, then I'd be tempted to wait for Avid to fix the bugs in the Avid generic plug-in and save the money unless you need a feature in one of the other plug-ins that Avid won't have (and I've no idea what those may be). If you're running an older version of MC that doesn't have the generic plug-in, then you now have a couple of other options besides rewrapping.

DStone:

Personally if you're going to be on the latest version of MC, then I'd be tempted to wait for Avid to fix the bugs in the Avid generic plug-in

Sorry, I can't resist it.

It has taken Avid just over 4 years and 4 months to get this far with their XAVC-S generic plug-in. I certainly would not be tempted to wait until they fix the bugs.

Regards

Douglas

"Hey Mom, Douglas is picking on me!!!"

LOL!

For me it's a question of saving money. I don't want to spend for something I can get for free. Of course, I wouldn't suggest waiting forever, and as the GH5 problems may be related to this as well one would hope the generic plug-in will be a high priority fix.

I think a bigger issue is the metadata, particularly that provided by the Sony A7S/A7S II and the GH5. I don't have either one at the moment, nor do I have any reason to rent one in the near future, so it comes down to someone who has these cameras to try the various plug-ins and see what they do support. At the moment it's not apparent to me that the MC plug-in supports anything more than timecode. Both Nablet and Drastic.TV say they support metadata, but there's no list of what is or isn't provided (outside of timecode of course).

DStone:

"Hey Mom, Douglas is picking on me!!!"

LOL!

Douglas, stop picking on Dave, or you'll be sent to bed without your supper

Dave, if you are lucky, my interjection may spur Avid on to get a fix done very quickly - just to prove me wrong.

Seriously, no NLE can do everything that their users want. If all NLEs could do everything that the other NLEs did, then there would be no point in having a choice of NLEs. It would be 1 NLE fits all. Vive la difference!

Regards

Douglas

I was actually surprised that Avid chose to develop support for XAVC-S. I presumed they would wait for Nablet to complete their offering. I suspect internal support was created to meet the needs of the MC|First market and not those of us running Media Composer. At any rate, it would be nice if their built-in implementation included proper time code and meta data support. 

BarkinMadd:

I suspect internal support was created to meet the needs of the MC|First market and not those of us running Media Composer.

And I suspect that you are correct. If you look at my posts before MC First was released, I was already saying XAVC-S support was pretty much a requirement. That it took to the second release of MC First to get it was surprising. That it's going to take till the third release of MC First to get it right is a little disappointing.

One thing Avid has to fix is timecode support for the A7S series. That's pretty much a must. Otherwise you have to rewrap the clips to QT to get timecode, and that defeats the purpose of the generic plug-in.

 

Just downloaded 8.9.2 and did a transcode of some Sony a7S XAVC-S footage 3840x2160.  The clip is aprox 23 minutes in length and I'm happy to say it transcoded without a problem.  I did two transcodes one DNxHR SQ and one DNxHR HQX just checking to see if it would transcode both low and high quality, no problems.  

Is this a plugin? and is it going to support older MC versions? because that would be real helpful.

The Avid Generic plug-in (which is what supports MP4/XAVC-S) is not backwards compatible. For older versions, check out the XAVC-S plug-ins from Nablet and Drastic TV.

I'm using Avid MC 8.9.3 on a Mac Pro (late 2013). I'm working with linked XAVC(s) clips from a Sony A7s. I get following error code, see screenshot. What's causing this? Has anyone got a solution?

Is MC | First or Pro Tools also installed?

If not, when did this start and any updates made prior?  

Give us a glimpse of your workflow?

Marianna

 

Hi Marianna,

 

No MC First or Pro Tools installed. We've updated to 8.9.3 a few months ago. With our upgrade we bought the Symphony option, could that be a factor? We're ama linking XAVC(s) from a Sony A7s. They work fine for a few minutes, but after a few minutes of editing in a timeline (1080/25p) the XAVC(s) clips give this error. Clips from a Sony FS7 in XAVC don't give problems. So I suppose it has to do with the Avid generic plug-in for XAVC(s) linking. We've upgraded MC to 8.9.3 because it's supposed to be able to link XAVC(s).

Kind regards and thanks in advance for any help.