-
FCPX Metadata in CatDV
Ok, so if this has been covered in another thread, please point me in the right direction, cause I haven’t found it yet.
I’m trying to find out how CatDV handles FCPX metadata on import, specifically keywords and custom metadata.
I’m having trouble finding information because FCPX threads seem to get outdated so quickly with all of the updates Apple has given us.
I currently run a FCSvr system, and our editors want to migrate to FCPX and Premiere. CatDV seems like one of the best potential choices to integrate different NLEs right now, but while I wait for SquareBox to write me back with trial licenses, I’d like to know if setting up a trial system will even be worth my time.
It comes down to whether or not we can ingest and tag footage in FCPX and have all the metadata come into CatDV, or any other MAM for that matter.
We recently ran a trial of ingesting and tagging footage in FCPX and we loved it, so we think it would be a good choice for ingest. Maybe you folks have different ideas?
-Aaron
-
4 Replies
-
This brings up a catch 22 with FCPX… how to best use a MAM like CatDV when FCPX Events essentially is a built in MAM.
Ingest normally occurs in a MAM so ingesting into FCPX AND CatDV does bring up the question of synchronizing the two. The obvious solution is to only ingest in CatDV and then send to FCPX. But then what about all the workflow efficiencies during the edit that would be lost by not using FCPX Events fully.
A facilities’ MAM (CatDV) should be the final word on metadata… so what about metadata added in FCPX. Apple is quick to recommend an external MAM but fails to address the above issue when consistent metadata is required in a shared workflow.
Now FCPX and CatDV both support QT’s extended metadata model i.e. com.arri.ArriReel in the case of Arri ProRes files which could be used to “bake in” any metadata added in FCPX… if FCPX actually did that, which it doesn’t.
Sigh…
John
-
THANK YOU.
I was beginning to suspect this sort of contradiction going on between what FCPX is capable of for a single user, and how to manage those capabilities for multiple users in a MAM.
In a way, I’m a bit baffled still at the concept of Events. On the one hand they make sense, you group your footage around a location and time, and it seems brilliant—you have your multiple cameras with their unique tags, you can put together your multicam interviews, your b-roll, it’s all there in one place. I love it. But then when you introduce the concept of shared storage and MAMs, it begins to fall apart. It’s the fact that FCPX is managing the metadata in kind of a group basis (e.g. CurrentVersion.fcpevent holds all the data for the clips in the event) but what happens when you don’t want everything in your event all the time?? Our editors don’t need ALL of the footage from each event. Best case scenario, we ingest things to events, we tag it, we upload it to our shared storage with metadata intact, and then we hunt through it (with all the search power of our metadata) and bring back down only the clips we need for our particular project.
This seems like an obvious way of wanting to do things, am I missing something?
-Aaron
-
[Aaron Rathjen] “I was beginning to suspect this sort of contradiction going on between what FCPX is capable of for a single user, and how to manage those capabilities for multiple users in a MAM.”
Yeah I’m way beyond suspicion. I tried communicating this to Apple but they don’t get it. Seems they think coping is the same as sharing even though the instant one makes a change to the event the copy is out of sync.
For our shared workflow, events are simply a complication with no real benefit compared to having media directly associated to the project like FCP7. We would have to manage the project file and the event file where missing either renders the project useless. Not to mention the pointless redirection of every media file thru aliases.
Apple really made it hard for large shared workflows to embrace FCPX.
John
-
Seems like Squarebox recently added this page to their Tutorial-page https://www.squarebox.com/exchanging-metadata-with-fcp-x/
Perhaps not exactly what you’re looking for?
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up