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Avid: Tape Column vs. Lab Roll Column for Relinking?
Hey folks,
I’m running into some conflicting advice about the best way to handle metadata for relinking during the online process. At my company, once the media is handed to me by the DIT and brought into Avid, I “copy” duplicate the Name column into the Lab Roll column using Command+D as part of the ingest process.
However, I’ve seen multiple posts here mentioning that the Tape column is the standard and more reliable option for relinking, especially when dealing with proxies and Original Camera Files (OCF) during the online stage. From what I’ve read, the Tape column seems to be the universally accepted standard across various post-production stages and software, but I’m trying to understand if using Lab Roll is a valid alternative or if it’s likely to cause problems later on.
My main question is whether I should be copying metadata from the Name column to Tape instead of Lab Roll. If the Tape column is truly necessary for smooth relinking, I want to make sure I’m doing things properly from the start.
If using Lab Roll is a bad idea, what’s the best way to transfer the metadata from Lab Roll to Tape without messing things up? Any advice or insight from those who’ve handled similar workflows would be hugely appreciated.
Thanks in advance for your help!
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2 Replies
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There’s nothing wrong with using Lab Roll as opposed to Tape to finish. The main difference between using Tape is when you create your EDLs during your final picture turnover, you’ll want to make sure that you set the list tool to use Lab Roll instead of Tape, which is the default.
I’m not sure how that would work with AAF. This method might potentially be confusing to your DI department, because it is incredibly common to use the Tape field. That said, as long as you are communicative with the DI department, it should be fine, and whenever possible and in doubt, you should send a test sequence to your DI department to see if they run into any issues.
Likewise, if you should step away from the project, you should make sure that your replacement knows about this way of working, as it would not be my first assumption to use Lab Rolls instead of Tape names. If the show goes on hiatus and you are unsure of if you will return to it, you should create a text document and place it on the hard drive that backs up your assets and let them know that they should be using Labroll instead of Tape.
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Hey Richard,
Thank you for your detailed response, really helpful and full of great insights.
I’ll definitely make sure to run a test sequence and document the workflow properly for anyone else who might pick up the project.
Thanks again for taking the time to break it down!
Cheers,
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