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Camera roll info from ALE and/or FLX
I’m on the edge of a meltdown trying to figure this out, and I can’t seem to find anyone else who has had my problem.
I’m assisting on a feature that has been shot in HDCam. The footage is being transfered to DVCam, and I have been provided with both ALE and FLX files for each tape for the digitizing. To save money on tapes they are combining several HDCam “rolls” onto one DVCam tape. Because many of the scenes have been shot with multiple cameras, I will need that camera roll info for when they do the HD conform (in FCP) later on.
So I have created a new database in Cinema Tools and imported the ALE file for the first DVCam tape, labeled as 1001. This tape includes camera rolls A2 and A3. CT creates the records and I export a Batch Capture list which I then bring into FCP.
For some reason though, CT is not exporting the camera roll numbers with the batch list. They’re there in CT, but they’re not there when I pull the batch list up in TextEdit, and they’re certainly not there in the “Camera Roll” column in FCP. All I’m getting is the reel number.
I tried exporting an XML list instead, which gave me the camera roll info (hooray!) but dropped the scene & take numbers (aw, come on). I also tried both using the FLX files instead but got the same results.
What the heck am I doing wrong? I’m new to CT (I’ve always done the logging myself), but I’ve gone through the manual a couple of times trying to figure this out to no avail. Is it even possible to get that info automatically into my batch list, or do I have to do it manually?
Thanks for any help!
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2 Replies
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Does the timecode of your DVCAM tapes match the timecode of the HDCAM?
If it doesn’t, your conform from HDCAM will be difficult.
If it does, then I would just change the reel numbers for each camera roll in Cinema Tools.
If Tape 1001, Camera Roll A1 is HDCAM tape 004, I would change it’s reel number from 1001 to 004, change A2 from 1001 to 005, etc, and then write which reels are contained on the DVCAM tape to show the 3 reels that it represents.
Since you are conforming in FCP, reel number and timecode are what you ultimately want to aim for.
Camera Roll is more oriented to a film workflow.
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Thanks! That’s what I will do then. It’s still a bit of manual data entry but nothing compared to what I would be doing if I was logging all the footage myself.
The timecodes are the same on both the HDCam and the DVCam, so no worries there.
Thanks again for your advice!
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