So Sebastian Dröge has continued to work hard on getting full support for the MXF container format in GStreamer. MXF is a quite complex format so this has taken some time, but the demuxer is really getting there these days. We should now be able to handle most standard MXF files and Sebastian recently added full seeking support to the demuxer. Screenshot of MXF playback in action below.

MXF file played in Totem

We are not 100% there yet though as there are still some formats we need to add support for and there is also the non-standard Avid file support which mostly works, but can use a little more love. As an added bonus Avid’s standard way to storing media is to put Audio and Video into separate MXF files which makes them a fun thing to try to support in Totem. :) Supporting those files is also needed to support the Digital Cinema extension of MXF.

So the demuxer is basically ready for testing for those of you with interest in our MXF support. Sebastian will start on the muxer soon and its development will push forward in parallel with further polishing of the demuxer.
Also some other minor issues, like Totem not yet knowing about MXF files so the file picker do not list them as ‘Supported files’, but I am sure we will clear that up quick enough.

GStreamer now got what I think its fair to say the best open source MXF demuxer out there thanks Sebastians effort and it is a big step forward for our overall effort here at Collabora Multimedia to push Pitivi forward as a video editor, especially in terms of it being able to exchange files with major video editors.