C300mkII .mxf performance? To rewrap or not?

[bellPost]

I've read lots of articles about this, but no one seems to have clearly answered this. Yes my machine plays back Canon c300mkII 160mbps 10-bit 422 .mxf files pretty well. However, I've found some articles and a video by Larry Jordan that suggest rewrapping the video to Quicktime for better performance. Not transcoding, but rewrapping to another container.

I'm  well versed with transcoding and all the benefits of I-frame vs GOP and I know that PP CC 2017 will pretty much handle anything you throw at it, but I just wondering if I can get even better performance by rewrapping. Mainly by using multiple streams of video for those picture-in-picture effects and real-time playback.

Does rewrapping help improve performance is it better to just leave the .mxf files alone?

I will however sometimes use the ProRes files from our Atomos Shogun and I do feel like the machine flys when using these. But if comes at a cost of file size.

Any thoughts?

[R Neil Haugen]

Best playback and large file size tend to be rather strongly linked ... what's up with that, right? 

Yea, some of the upper quality ProRes, DNxHD/R, and the Cineform codec formats really fly nicely through the computer. And for some things re-wrapping is a great gift. I know of a number of people who do a lot of re-wrapping with ffmpeg on a regular basis, saving re-encoding time (& the miniscule losses), but I'm not dealing with so much material that I can't do a transcode overnight at need.

Those files you're dealing with are hefty ... and of generally very high quality. I'd suggest checking with people that do re-wrap, perhaps even running over to the Creative Cow and some of the other pro-editing sites, posting questions. As it can save significant time over transcoding, if you could test a decent set of settings and find for yourself, with your media, whether it helps or not ... may be worth your time. Many do swear by it.

Neil

[bellPost]

Thank Neil. Gotta love the Cow! I'll try there next.

Like I said, I haven't experience many playback issues since we have a nice & fast Facilis Terrablock RAID and pretty good iMacs with loads of RAM and good GPUs. But after watched the below video I started to question if there better methods. I'll see what others have to say.

Larry Jordan FCPX and Premiere Pro CC 2016 Media Management - YouTube https://youtu.be/lf__pQ-XR7E?t=9m29s

That video especially made me think about using our c300mkII .mxf media along side out c100mkII AVCHD media. I forgot to mention that earlier, but wondering if rewrapping would benefit with using both format in one timeline.

thx again.

[Jim_Simon]

I think MXF is the better format.  None of the bugs of QuickTime.  Nothing to install or update.  It just works.