How to Get Avid Media Composer Read and Accept XAVC S files from Sony A7S II

To get Avid Media Composer and Sony A7S ii 4K XAVC S video to play nicely, the easy workaround is to convert XAVC S to Avid MC compatible codecs. Here is how.

”Hi, I’m trying to import video recordings from the new Sony a7s II to Avid MC6. The camera uses a flavor of MP4 that is called XAVC-S. I have tried the traditional importing method, but there’s no go. I have also tried the AMA plug-in created by Sony, unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to support Sony a7s II XAVC-S footage. Does that mean I have to use 3rd party software to convert formats? If so, does anyone know of a good XAVC-S Converter that is worth trying?’"

As the above said, Sony has created a special free of charge AMA plug-in for Avid which provides support for XAVC and XDCAM/XDCAM HD files in Avid Media Composer. However, XVAC S is not currently supported natively by Avid Media Composer. To fix the issue, a quick workaround is to convert XAVC S to Avid MC 4/5/6/7 more "edit" friendly codec DNxHD.



Brorsoft Video Converter for Mac is highly recommended here. The program is an easy-to-use yet professional XAVC S Converter for Mac. It's able to convert XAVC S files from Sony A7S II to Avid Media Composer more compatible DNxHD .mov video. With it, you may also encode XAVC S/XAVC to Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro, FCE, iMovie and more NLE programs highly compatible formats for editing. If meet the XAVC S codec issues on Windows PC, please get Brorsoft Video Converter to solve the problem.

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How to Transcode Sony A7S II XAVC S 4K Video to DNxHD for Avid Media Composer Professional Editing?

Step 1: Install and run the XAVC S Video Converter on your Mac, then run it. Click on “Add”, and browse your files; select all the XAVC S files you wanna convert. If you want to combine all the files together for easy importing to FCP, please tick the box “Merge into one” on the main interface.



Step 2: Click Format on the main interface and choose Avid Media Composer > Avid DNxHD(*.mov) as output format. It ensures the best quality while working with the output files in Avid.



Step 3: Click the "Settings" button and set proper video/ audio parameters. You can reset set the video size, bitrate and frame rate, audio sample rate, audio channel. If you would like to use default settings, simply skip this step.

Step 4: When you finish all settings, click the "Convert" button to start the XAVC S to DNxHD .mov conversion.

After the conversion, you can click "Open" button to get the generated DNxHD .mov files effortlessly. Now, it's much easy for you to add Sony A7S II XAVC S files to Avid Media Composer 5/5.5/6/6.5/7 for further editing.

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