database / catalog outside of BRU?

[Tim Jones]

Jim,

As it has been since 2004, the information regarding the BRU Producer’s Edition tape and catalog infrastructure is completely documented in the BRU Produer’s Edition User’s Guide in Appendix B. The files are plain text just for this reson, so that you can access them outside of teh UI.

Also, NEOFinder (https://www.cdfinder.de used to be CDFinder) will import the catalogs directly.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Neil Sadwelkar]

If you get NeoFinder you can import Bru PE catalogs one by one. These are in the files with a ‘.gz’ extension in the folder /Library/Application Support/BRU PE/Catalogs/xxxxxxxxxx folder.

NeoFinder lets you browse and search the LTO contents like they were a local hard disk. What’s missing is the tape name in case you’ve set a tape name when making an archive.

You can then export this as a csv file and import that into a spreadsheet. If you need to total file sizes, you’ll need to add a formula to extract that. File sizes come out in a separate column as
10.5 MB (1,05,33,775 Bytes)
29.4 MB (2,93,50,736 Bytes)
and so on.

Also, in the trial I did with NeoFinder 6.9.8, there was no file creation date, or file modified date for any file.
So I’m not sure if its missing in the Bru archive (unlikely) or in the translation from Bru archive to NeoFinder.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Jim Curtis]

Neil and Tim, a long overdue thank you for your replies.

I downloaded the demo of NeoFinder. I navigated it to my Catalogs folder, and found the BRU-xxxxxx.gz files inside. If I double-click the .gz, it expands and produces a Unix-executable file that I can open in a number of text apps I can use to copy-paste into Excel.

I don’t get how NeoFinder is needed for this. I can navigate to those Catalog folders in the Finder and find the .gz folders manually.

– Is there something I’m missing about being able to read the contents of the .gz files without expanding them?

– If not, shouldn’t I delete those Unix-executables after I copy what’s in them? I don’t want to mess up BRU PE by diddling with the Catalog contents. I suppose I could option-drag them elsewhere to copy so that I’m not risking messing up my BRU Catalog.

I was hoping for something really simple that would read ALL my catalog data at once, because I’m just a video guy, not an IT expert. I’ve got 115 Catalogs (tapes) in my library. If I have to copy and paste date from 115 catalogs, I just as well should use the Search function in BRU PE to find media assets for me.

Thanks again,
Jim

Jim Curtis
jamesphilipcurtis.com

MacPro 5,1; 6-core 3.06 GHz; 128 G RAM all the same brand; dual boot: 1011.6 & 10.12.6; QT 7.6.6; Primary display: 4K HP Dreamcolor; secondary: 24\” HP DreamColor; Nvidia TITAN GPU; ATTO R680 RAID5 16TB; ATTO H680 HBA for HP LTO5 tape; USB3 PCIe card; latest drivers all around

[Tim Jones]

You don’t expand the gz files, NEOFinder imports them and lets you manipulate them within its interface.

Be aware, BRU PE will no longer recognize the gunzipped files, so pay attention to the files that you decompressed and re-gzip them (NOT Zip) in place.

Tim
—
Tim Jones
CTO – TOLIS Group, Inc.
https://www.tolisgroup.com
BRU … because it’s the RESTORE that matters!

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Jim,

You should definitely not delete the .gz files as they are needed by Bru PE.

Neofinder lets you import these gz files and have an archive browser which doesn’t need Bru PE to search and locate files.

If you’d rather work with the file inside the gz and parse it yourself, you could do a search for ‘,gz’ in the Bru PE folder so they all show up together, and then select all and copy them out these to another folder.

Then you can expand them one by one and use another utility like BBEdit to merge all these files into one file which you can import into a spreadsheet. But, in case some or all of your Bru archives have file sequences lile Arriraw, or DPX sequences, then the resulting text file and spreadsheet will be be huge and unwieldy.

Bru PE lists file sequences as each file. So, even a LTO-6 full or Alexa/Panasonic/Canon raw ends up in a huge text file.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India