Camera Archives Disadvantage

[Gerry Fraiberg]

I’m about to start a documentary, and have created Camera Archives of all material. I was thinking of transcribing interviews before importing, using Transcriva, an older transcription software. Transcriva allows you to load a video clip to work from. I was thinking of using Sony Catalyst Browse to convert XAVC-L clips to MP4 to save space, but it doesn’t see the Camera Archives which are proprietary to FCPX.

Suggestions? Thoughts?

[John Rofrano]

[Gerry Fraiberg] “Sony Catalyst Browse to convert XAVC-L clips to MP4 to save space, but it doesn’t see the Camera Archives which are proprietary to FCPX. Suggestions? Thoughts?”

Camera Archives are not proprietary to FCPX. They are Mac OS X Package folders and really are just like any other folder except that they are treated like files under certain circumstances. It’s unfortunate that the Sony developers are not smart enough to realize this but now that you do it’s easy to get around. 😉

All you need to do is tell Catalyst Browse the complete path to the folder inside the Camera Archive that contains the video files and it will happily open it and process your videos. First you need to know the full path. To get this path you need to go to the Finder and right-click on the Camera Archive and select Show Package Contents, then when the files get refreshed, you will see the root of the camera card. You may have to right-click on it and select Show Package Contents again and again to eventually get into the folder that holds the video. Keep doing this until you are at the folder just above where the video files are. Then you want to right-click and select Copy to copy this folder name.

Once you have the fully qualified folder name to the video files, then you would open Catalyst Browse and use the menu item File | Go to location… and paste that path into it and click OK and Catalyst Browse will open the folder and display the video files within.

Let me give you an example using an AVCHD Camera Archive that I have called 20150523-LimeRock-TransAm that’s in my Movies folder. Since it’s in my Movies folder the full path is “/Users/rofrano/Movies/20150523-LimeRock-TransAm”. The hidden extension is “.fcarch” and the path to the AVCHD files inside of it is “/AVCHD/BDMV/STREAM”. That makes the full path that I would paste into Catalyst Browse:

/Users/rofrano/Movies/20150523-LimeRock-TransAm.fcarch/AVCHD/BDMV/STREAM

Your path will be something similar. If I paste that path into Catalyst Browse, it will open the STREAM folder and show me my video files. You just have to find the correct folder for your XAVC-L camera card.

The important point in all of this is that Camera Archives are not proprietary to FCP X. They are just Mac Package folders which you can get into quite easily and as you may have noticed, they mirror the folder structure of your camera card exactly. Not a disadvantage but an advantage because it retains the camera card format.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[Gerry Fraiberg]

Thanks John. I tried your solution, but Catalyst Browse gives me an error message: “The Specified Path Does Not Exist”. Yes, I can right click on the Camera Archive icon and choose Show Package Contents, and follow the folders to the clips. But not with the Sony software, even selecting File > Go To > file path name.

[John Rofrano]

Can you paste your path here into a post? Just so I can see if anything looks strange in it?

This works for me and unless there is something really special about XAVC-L clips, it should work for you.

You could also make a regular folder on your hard drive and copy and paste the video into that older from the Camera Archive. This would be exactly like if you had copied the files from the original camera card into a folder. Does that workflow normally work for you? (sorry I know nothing about XAVC-L camera cards)

If you can explain your normal workflow for these clips, I can explain how to do it with the Camera Archive.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[Gerry Fraiberg]

It’s not the XAVC-L clips that Sony Catalyst Browse can’t see, it’s the Camera Archive created by FCP X. Using your method, I’ve tried pointing to folders containing AVCHD content and Nikon D7000 .mov files. In all cases the error message is the path does not exist. While Camera Archive is merely a container, that container structure is invisible to Catalyst Browse.

This is the path to a Camera Archive containing XAVC-L content:
Media Drive/FCPX_Cam Archives/Cairns-006_2016-06-17/Private/XDRoot/Clip

And the path to a Camera Archive with Nikon D700 content:
Media Drive/FCPX_Cam Archives/1407_RLK-Party/DCIM/105D7000

Here are a couple of screen shots of my Finder window and part of the Catalyst Browse window.

In the first image you can see the Camera Archives, including the Media Drive/FCPX_Cam Archives/1407_RLK-Party/DCIM/105D7000. But in the second images, none of the Camera Archives appear.

[Jeff Kirkland]

My thought would be to import the clips into an external unmanaged library and let Transciva access them from there, or use something like EditReady to do the conversion as that shouldn’t have any problem letting you copy the path to the files inside the camera archive.

By the way, and everyone but may already have known this, the easiest way to do this in any application is to open the path in the Finder, then use the destination apps open dialog and drag the folder from the finder window into the app’s dialog window. unless the app is using some weird code, the app dialog will receive the path to the folder you just dragged in.

I’ve not used catalyst in years but dragging and dropping the path into whatever dialog you get when you go file->open could work around it not seeing the archive. Otherwise, let FCPX or something like EditReady do it instead.

(For some reason I can\’t edit my own posts so apologies in advance for the stupid mistakes and bad English that I can\’t go back and fix)

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer & Cinematographer
Melbourne, Australia | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[John Rofrano]

[Gerry Fraiberg] This is the path to a Camera Archive containing XAVC-L content:
Media Drive/FCPX_Cam Archives/Cairns-006_2016-06-17/Private/XDRoot/Clip

And the path to a Camera Archive with Nikon D700 content:
Media Drive/FCPX_Cam Archives/1407_RLK-Party/DCIM/105D7000

I see four (4) things immediately wrong with those paths. 😉

1. They should both start with a forward slash. i.e.,

   /Media Drive/

   not

   Media Drive/

2. There is a space in some of your folder names like ‘Media Drive’ and ‘FCPX_Cam Archives’ so you must either enclose them in quotes or escape the spaces with a backslash. That means use

   "/Media Drive" & "/FCPX_Cam Archives"

   or

   /Media\ Drive & /FCPX_Cam\ Archives

3. Your post uses ‘FCPX_Cam Archives’ but your screen shot has an underscore in front of that folder (_FCPX_Cam Archives)
4. Finally, Camera Archives have a hidden extension .fcarch that needs to be included in the path in order for it to work.

Making those four corrections, try these paths instead:

/Media\ Drive/_FCPX_Cam\ Archives/Cairns-006_2016-06-17.fcarch/Private/XDRoot/Clip
/Media\ Drive/_FCPX_Cam\ Archives/1407_RLK-Party.fcarch/DCIM/105D7000

– or –

"/Media Drive/_FCPX_Cam Archives/Cairns-006_2016-06-17.fcarch/Private/XDRoot/Clip"
"/Media Drive/_FCPX_Cam Archives/1407_RLK-Party.fcarch/DCIM/105D7000"

Don’t forget to include the quotes (“”) if you use the second set of paths. Either of those should work.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com

[John Rofrano]

[Jeff Kirkland] “the easiest way to do this in any application is to open the path in the Finder, then use the destination apps open dialog and drag the folder from the finder window into the app’s dialog window. unless the app is using some weird code, the app dialog will receive the path to the folder you just dragged in. “

Unfortunately , this doesn’t work (I tried it) because the app is, in fact, using very weird code. It appears that Catalyst was written by (or at least designed by) a team of Windows developers who tried really, really, really, hard to make it work just like a Windows application on a Mac. So it follows none of the Mac standards that you would expect. It drove me absolutely crazy and Sony insistent that they wanted the Windows version and Mac version to look and behave identical so I just gave up trying to convince them that they were doing the wrong thing for Mac users. That’s also why Catalyst has those big “Hello Kitty” icons and buttons. It’s for people using a Microsoft Surface Touch device. I also tried to explain that Apple didn’t make a Mac with a touch screen but once again they insisted that touch support was extremely important to them. Like I said, I gave up. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You make a good suggestion though Jeff. You could open a Terminal window, drag the folder and drop it into that, and the fully qualified name will be pasted into the Terminal window. Then just cut and paste that into the File | Go to location… dialog.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com