• Apple Final Cut Pro

  Creating a script or outline for the client

  Posted by Andrew Wright on January 30, 2013 at 4:59 am

  I’m fortune to never have to edit with the client looking over my shoulder. Instead, I keyword about 400-500 clips from 30 interviews and drop them into a project for the client to review a rough draft. At this point I’ve assigned keywords to every clip, including the topic and a unique clip number… something like “snowboarding” and “0402” (which means it’s the second clip of the fourth interview, and he talked about snowboarding).

  So here’s my question… how can I generate a script with keywords so the client can make notes for each clip? It seems like a no-brainer, but so far I’ve only been able to get clip names and not keywords.

  Ideally, I’d like the clip name, the keywords, and the timecode. Something like…

  Clip Keywords TC
  John 0402 snowboarding 0:00:00 – 0:12:17
  Mike 0817 snowboarding 0:12:18 – 0:43:08

  How do people communicate with non-tech savvy clients about individual clips?

  T. Payton replied 13 years, 5 months ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  T. Payton

  February 5, 2013 at 4:28 pm

  All that information can be derived from the FCPXML export of an event.

  I’m not aware of simple app that will parse an FCPXML, but it would be fairly straightforward to write one. You might look into CATDV (https://www.squarebox.co.uk/) should be able to give you a report that you need for your client. However it costs more than a FCPX license. Get the trial and see if it suits your needs.

  Could you share how you are getting a list of clips out of FCPX?

  ——
  T. Payton
  OneCreative, Albuquerque
• 

  Andrew Wright

  February 8, 2013 at 4:35 am

  Funny you should ask, T. I exported FCP XML and opened it in CatDV! Within CatDV I was able to convert Markers (which come from keywords) in to Sub clips. I then exported the sub clips to Excel. This gave me a list of everything in the video, but not in the order that they were placed in the project. That I had to do manually.

  I also tried exporting a CMX3600 file and opening in Excel. This was pretty good for matching clips to timecode, but it listed media files instead of keywords!

  Back to the drawingboard!
• 

  T. Payton

  February 9, 2013 at 12:59 am

  Bummer.

  The keyword data is all in there it is just a matter of pulling it out and converting the time unit in the XML to time code. If you had some time you could probably put something together in Xcode fairly quickly. Apple has some online training for free.

  One thing to note about key frames is that they are related to a time range within a clip. Often times it can be the whole range of the clip, but of cause it could be just a few frames. This would compound some issues with communicating which keywords were with what clip.

  ——
  T. Payton
  OneCreative, Albuquerque

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