359 US $ to handle XDCAM with Premiere Pro CS4

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Indeed, Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 does not export XDCAM formats (EX, HD and others). That means you cannot properly archive your XDCAM work with Premiere Pro CS4. To export your XDCAM videos with Premiere, you’ll have to buy Mainconcept MPEG PRO HD 4 plug-in, whose price is 359 $ / 279 € (plus appl. Tax).

This situation is unfortunately not properly indicated by Adobe, that’s the least that one can say. It wouldn’t be false to say it is even hidden.

(Just in case anybody would know how to correctly export XDCAM from Premiere Pro CS4 without buying Mainconcept plug-in, let us know, but I am pretty shure it is not possible.)

Unlike Premiere Pro CS4, many others professionnals video editing software, which can be less expensive than Premiere, like Final Cut Studio, Sony Vegas or Canopus Edius, can fully manage XDCAM without compelling customers to buy anything more.

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A bit of explanations regarding XDCAM EX and Premiere Pro CS4 :

XDCAM EX video container, whose name is MP4, wraps MPEG-2 codec for images + high bit rate PCM codec for audio. So Even if people from Adobe tell you that it is possible, for example, to export XDCAM EX format in mpeg-2 with Premiere pro CS4, be aware that :

- Premiere Pro CS4 does not allow to export MPEG-2 images codec with PCM audio codec, but with MPEG audio codec. MPEG audio codec is 3 megabits per minute maximum, PCM audio codec is 11. That’s why to export XDCAM EX with Premiere makes you lose about 70 % of your original sound information.

- Premiere Pro CS4 does not export Mpeg-2 images with smart rendering. (Smart rendering consists in rendering only sections affected by editing effects, in order to don’t have quality loss on others sections.)

- So to export XDCAM EX MPEG-2 images with smart rendering + XDCAM EX PCM audio codec from Premiere Pro CS4, no choice but to buy 359 $ / 279 € (plus appl. Tax) Mainconcept plug-in.

- Unlike Premiere Pro CS4, most professional video editing softwares (Edius, Final Cut Pro, Vegas...) do export PCM audio codec and MPEG-2 with smart rendering without compelling customers to buy anything more.