• Apple Final Cut Pro

  Affordable software DAM and FCPX camera masters

  Posted by Craig Seeman on November 20, 2015 at 7:20 pm

  Looking for an affordable DAM to use with FCPX and camera masters.
  I’ve looked at Maign KeyFlow Pro and SquareBox CatDV and wondering if there are other options.
  Problems I’m running into:

  KeyFlow Pro
  Can’t see the contents FCPX Camera Archives which pretty much means every camera master going back to 2011 for me.
  Additionally it can’t read XDCAM EX or XAVC-L files last I checked. This is going back to 2008 for me. I feel I’ve been cursed by choosing Sony cameras.
  While it can read AVCHD files it doesn’t understand the metadata used to join longer clips.

  CatDV
  Can see the contents of FCPX Camera Archives so that’s good.
  Reading XDCAM EX or XAVC-L files Requires the Pro version and CalibratedQ Software MP4-EX reader.
  Last I checked, it too can’t join together longer AVCHD clips.

  I’m wondering if I’m overlooking other options. It seems that FCPX (Camera Archives) and Sony XDCAM flavors are an extremely difficult combination.

  My needs are fairly simple. I just want to keep track of all my camera masters, mostly XDCAM flavors back to 2008 and FCPX Camera Archives going back to 2011.

  Noah Kadner replied 10 years, 9 months ago 3 Members · 7 Replies
• 7 Replies

• 

  Noah Kadner

  November 20, 2015 at 9:19 pm

  Sounds a bit like overkill for your needs. If you’re open to organizing by Library you should investigate:

  https://www.arcticwhiteness.com/finalcutlibrarymanager/

  Noah

  FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
  FCP eXchange – FCPX Workshops
• 

  Craig Seeman

  November 20, 2015 at 10:20 pm

  Thanks but that seems focused on Libraries. I need to search assets such as camera masters directly and have proxies that I can play.. To my knowledge KeyFlow Pro and CatDV are the only ones that are local software based but maybe there are others.

  KeyFlow Pro for example
  https://www.keyflowpro.com

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmMVDiVLn04
• 

  Oliver Peters

  November 20, 2015 at 11:26 pm

  Cantemo Portal?

  https://www.cantemo.com
  https://www.cantemo.com/fcpx.html

  – Oliver

  Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
  Orlando, FL
  http://www.oliverpeters.com
• 

  Oliver Peters

  November 20, 2015 at 11:27 pm

  Also Axle Video

  https://www.axlevideo.com/products.html

  – Oliver

  Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
  Orlando, FL
  http://www.oliverpeters.com
• 

  Craig Seeman

  November 22, 2015 at 6:11 pm

  Thanks for those suggestions. Cantemo seems very opaque about their pricing. Granted they focus on partners and modules but even then there’s no obvious base price for the modules for a small facility or one person shop.
• 

  Noah Kadner

  November 22, 2015 at 7:06 pm

  Cantemo is a highly powerful DAM and integrates well with FCPX (among many) but it’s not cheap and I would generally not suggest it for one-man shops. Axel/CatDV or a homegrown solution would be more cost-effective.

  Noah

  FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
  FCP eXchange – FCPX Workshops
• 

  Noah Kadner

  November 22, 2015 at 7:40 pm

  If your main goal is a unified catalog of all of your FCPX camera archives, here’s a relatively simple and very cheap ‘hack.’

  Upon creation of your camera archive, quit FCPX and select the archive in the finder and add the file extension .DMG. It can then be read directly and indexed by any folder/volume catalog application such as:

  https://www.cdfinder.de/en/downloads.html

  You can do this in batches via this tip- https://www.tekrevue.com/tip/batch-rename-files-os-x-yosemite/

  When you need to bring something back into FCPX simply change the extension back from .DMG to .fcarch and FCPX will recognize it again as an archive.

  Noah

  FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
  FCP eXchange – FCPX Workshops

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