Workaround for editing Canon XF300 MXF in Premiere Pro CC/CS6/CS5

In this article, you will learn how to edit Canon XF300 MXF footage in Premiere Pro CC/CS6/CS5 without any problem. Please read on.

If you are using a Canon XF300 camera with Premiere Pro 6.0 or its earlier versions of CS4, CS5, CS5.5, or even Premiere Elements, you may see the error "ERROR COMPILING MOVIE: UNKNOWN" coming up when exporting a movie composed of MXF clips, whether it's to AVI, H.264, etc., this error comes up, in particular when the movie is "long", i.e. a half minute to a minute. Otherwise, with short clips there is no problem. It's enough to make you want to pull your hair out. The Internet is full of discussions on this issue, but we don't know why Adobe can't fix it? The bottom line, however, is that once you transcode your Canon XF300 MXF files to H.264 using Acrok MXF Converter, there are absolutely no problems regardless of file length…

We were concerned with possibly losing quality by encoding Canon XF300 MXF to H.264 for Premiere Pro CC/CS6/CS5 with Acrok. But a side-by-side comparison showed us there was absolutely no discernible difference. We thought some users might want to know this because it permits Premiere Pro CC/CS6/CS5 users to rectify this problem and continue on with it. So we share the workaround here for people who wanna import Canon XF300 MXF to Premiere Pro CC/CS6/CS5 for edit without meeting the error "ERROR COMPILING MOVIE: UNKNOWN".

Free download the MXF Video Converter

How to convert Canon XF300 MXF to H.264 to open successfully in Premiere Pro CC/CS6/CS5? 

Step 1: Run Canon XF300 MXF to Premiere Converter and load source MXF clips to it 

You can load Canon XF300 MXF clips to the program through "Add File" button.

Step 2: Choose H.264 as best output format for Premiere Pro CC/CS6/CS5

Acrok MXF to Premiere Converter offers optimized format preset for Adobe Premiere. Transcoding Canon XF300 MXF to H.264, please click "Format" menu firstly and then follow "Adobe Premiere/Sony Vegas" > "MOV (AVC)(*.mov)".

Tips:

If you not sure which format to choose, you can refer to this Adobe Premiere Pro CC/CS6/CS5 editable formats.

Step 3: Adjust parameters if you need

In case the default settings do not fit your requirement, you can click "Settings" button and enter "Profile Settings" panel to adjust video size, bit rate, frame rate, sample rate and audio channels.

Detailed information can be seen here in this "Task information" table.

Step 4: Transcode Canon XF300 MXF to Premiere Pro CC/CS6/CS5 compatible H.264

Tap "Convert" button to start Canon XF300 MXF to Premiere H.264 Conversion. When the conversion task is done, click "Open" button to get the exported H.264 MOV footage for Adobe Premiere Pro CC/CS6/CS5 to do further editing.