ALE Syntax Error

[Michael Phillips]

Your global headings have no value so timecode checks cannot be done since it does not know what timebase to use:

Heading
FIELD_DELIM TABS
AUDIO_FORMAT FILLIN
TAPE FILLIN
FPS FILLIN
VIDEO_FORMAT FILLIN
FILM_FORMAT FILLIN

Should be for 108p/23.976 non film project

Heading
FIELD_DELIM TABS
FPS 23.976
VIDEO_FORMAT 1080

The other fields can be missing. Just a heads up that unless these timecode and some source value match EXACTLY you will not be able to relink or merge into any of the dailies. This has been a loooong time request for Media Composer. IF the sources come from the same source as in the good old tape days, then you could declare that value in the global as in:

Heading
FIELD_DELIM TABS
TAPE 001
FPS 23.976
VIDEO_FORMAT 1080

But looking at the ALE there are no sources declared, and assuming a file based camera, every event will be its own source.

Michael

[Aaron Martinez]

Hello,

I changed the header on the file but I still am not able to import the ALE.

Did you try the file yourself?
I am not sure if it is something with the fie or the way I am trying to import it.

I am not sure what I need to do to make this work.

Aaron

[Michael Phillips]

The header had a double TAB. I corrected that and it imports fine. The other issue the file has is the COMMENTS column has too many characters. In the corrected file below, I shortened the ALE to just the first 7 events where event 7 has a really long value in comments. It crashed the application. If you shorten that to be the length of other events’ comments, it imports fine. Go ahead and edit that in this file and you will see that it imports.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1226998/test.ale.zip

And because of the need to give it a SOURCE that will not match the camera originals, it will not merge or link.

Michael

[Aaron Martinez]

Hello,

There must be something wrong w/ my avid. I tried to import this file and my computer crashed.
I also copied the header into different files and had the same crash.

I open avid and when i click import the import window opens and then closes in an instant.
I open it again and it may let me access the files, but it either freezes when i select the ALE, or it crashes when i click import.

But from what i understand from Michael the information will not relink to my material anyway?

Is this correct?

Thanks,
Aaron

[Michael Phillips]

Maybe I wasn’t that clear, but in the ALE that you downloaded, it will still crash because I wanted you to see that the last even in the ALE had a comments field that way too long and that is what is crashing MC upon import. You can open the ALE file in a text editor (I like TextWrangler on OS X) and either delete the last event or shorten the comments column to match the other events. Then it will import.

In all cases, it will not relink to any of the media because ALE merge and relink is based on an EXACT match of:

1. Either Tape or Source File metadata fields. This is the file name of the source file being recorded of which there as no record in the original ALE file.
2. Start and End timecode must also be an exact match. There is no fuzzy merging based on ranges and such with ALE merge.

And if it did work, some events may be limited or truncated to the limitation of characters as witnessed with this sample file.

Michael