Among a variety of video formats in the video field, not many people know about MXF format. When people meet MXF for the first time, they will probably wonder what is a MXF file, how to convert MXF video to MOV, AVI or other popular formats and are there any MXF viewers free. All these problems will be discussed in this guide.

1. What is a MXF file

2. What are MXF converters

3. Convert MXF to MOV

4. MXF Players on Mac/PC

1. What is a MXF file

MXF, short for Material eXchange Format, is a container media format similar to AVI, MOV and MP4. MXF and supports a number of codecs. The metadata wrapper coming along describes the material inside the MXF files. MXF is capable to support timecode and metadata fully, which is actually designed as an industry standard for future professional video/audio applications without regards to user platforms. Carrying a subset of AAC (Advanced Authoring Format) data model. Sony XDCAM, Panasonic DVCPRO P2, Canon EOS C300 and Ikegami camcorders are using MXF format.

MXF integrates with a subset of AAC (Advanced Authoring Format) data model and works well with NLE (non-linear editing) systems based on AAC.

2. What are MXF converters

Free MXF converters include FFmpeg, GStreamer and Ingex.

Download FFmpeg free

Get Gstreamer here: How to use GStreamer

Download Ingex free

Due to a fact that the above tools are less convenient to use, many people also use Avid, Adobe Premiere Pro (3.1 or above) and Final Cut Pro. PiTiVi (download) is an open source and integrated video editor (using Gstreamer) supporting MXF conversion, but it only works on Linux.

3. Convert MXF to MOV

You can use either method mentioned above to convert MXF to MOV or other formats. Since different MXF files are based on variable code rates and codecs, the given tools may not succeed in every MXF to MOV conversion. XDCAM Transfer is an efficient and easy-to-operate complete AVID MXF to MOV conversion on your Mac. Simply click the "Import" button, the MXF wrapper file will be stripped and you will get the converted MOV file.

Click to access and download XDCAM Transfer free

4. MXF Players for Mac/PC

MXF4mac Player is the only MXF player software for Mac (integrated) I have found. You can also use VLC player, but a plug-in and some little tricks are required. We will later composed a post as to how to use VLC andFFmpeg plug-in to play MXF files on Mac.

To play MXF (Avid) files on PC, you can use MPC player (Media Player Classic) or kMPlayer. P2 Viewer may be needed to play MXF files with audio.

Check out imElfin Video Converter below, you will be able to convert videos in multi formats within one program.