Does FCP X read P2 metadata?

[Jeremy Garchow]

This was going to be one of the first things I checked. Haven’t had time to do a clean install yet.

[Helmut Kobler]

It kills me that for all of Apple’s big talk about metadata, they’re not able to make that clear. You’d think fcp x would support custom metadat coming from a camera, but I’m skeptical that Apple would bother supporting the metadata formats of so many camera manufacturers. In other words: Apple is too lazy.

We’ll see.

——————-
Documentary Camera
http://www.varicaminla.com

[Jeremy Garchow]

The thing that bothers me is that it comes from an XML ¬_¬

We all know how XML is handled in FCP right now.

I wonder what Andreas thinks of all this? Haven’t talked to him about it yet.

[Gary Adcock]

[Helmut Kobler] “‘m wondering if P2 metadata such as Program Name, Location, User Clip Name, Reporter, Purpose, Object, and more importantly, MARKERS, are read into Final Cut and searchable?”

Helmut.

That would depend on the P2 recording. I was able to open a 4 yr old rchived DVCPROHD P2 media project using P2CMS to handle the file package, then FCPX allowed me to import the HVX200 Content without issue, I was not using most of those metadata markers in my content so all I got was base data of Name, Location,TC, clip info and spanning info.

I would think that Apple is dedicated to seeing and handling all kinds of Metadata, right now some of the tools that support the AVC codecs is still being dealt with, much like the same issue there is with Sony’s EX and XD media formats, you can use them, but you still need an external application to be able to ingest the materials.

gary adcock
Studio37

Post and Production Workflow Consultant
Production and Post Stereographer
Chicago, IL

https://blogs.creativecow.net/24640

[Helmut Kobler]

Thanks for the info, Gary. Hmmm….if the Location metadata field came across, that’s promising, since that was never supported in Final Cut 7 (I believe). I may just have to buy FCP X and return it if I’m unhappy. I would probably hold onto it if it handled full P2 metadata. If not, what a disappointment after waiting for 5 or so years…

And Jeremy, I have to wonder how Andreas is sizing all this up as well. It will probably take a while for the dust to settle and know what the new Final Cut landscape really looks like.

——————-
Documentary Camera in Los Angeles
http://www.lacameraman.com

[Jeremy Garchow]

I just imported P2 material, and man is it awful.

Zero metadata, not even UserClipName. All clips come in as the year-month-day, then time that is not accurate as it also shows creation date.

AVC-I does not come in natively even though I told it not to transcode, DVCPro HD is forced to transcode. When transcoding AVC-I, it comes in as ProRes and not HQ. The file in the “Original Media” folder is 240 MB, the file in the “HIgh Quality Media” folder is 60MB (after I told FCPx to transcode it), which makes no sense. This is kind of bunk.

What is weird is that I can see the UserClipName in the Import Archive window.

So, looks like this in import window with User Clip Name:

Then goes in to event like this:

Hey Helmut, how’s CS 5.5 on metadata? I was a little excited for FCPx, but this is a huge time suck and makes all kinds of weird and totally unnecessary copies.

Jeremy

[Helmut Kobler]

Ugh, Jeremy, that’s horrible news. No metadata support? How can Apple blather on about the brave new world of metadata but reject it when it comes in from camera? P2 metadata has been available for about 5 years, and Apple *still* doesn’t support it. That’s just pathetic. Maybe the only hope is that Final Cut X makes it easy for developers to create that functionality, but I tend to doubt it. Apple has messed so much other stuff up, why not this too?

CS 5.5 metadata support is better but not perfect. It reads custom clip names, the Creator field, the Shooting Location field, but not Program Title or other fields (as far as I can tell). I also don’t think it reads markers.

But given Adobe’s can-do attitude, and me writing emails to the product manager, I’m hoping an upcoming version will recognize the rest of the metadata.

P.S. Are you sure about no native AVC-Intra support in X? It says native support right on Apple’s web page…

——————-
Documentary Camera in Los Angeles
http://www.lacameraman.com

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Helmut Kobler] “Maybe the only hope is that Final Cut X makes it easy for developers to create that functionality, but I tend to doubt it.”

That’s my hope. It does seem like it’s a major building block for what’s to come. It’s just too bad as even fcp7 had userclipname support in L&T for the rare times I used L&T. I hope Andreas can figure something out in the future.

[Helmut Kobler] “P.S. Are you sure about no native AVC-Intra support in X? It says native support right on Apple’s web page…”

I should rephrase. I don’t know how much you’ve played with X but you import the p2 cards through an import dialogue that is the new log and transfer window (it’s much different). So, upon import you have a a choice of copying all media to the event on your scratch disk, or leaving it where it is, and fcp will link to the original media which basically puts an alias to the orig media in the event folder.

I chose to use orig media, but fcpx creates an AVC-I QuickTime movie anyway, and does not alias the native MXF file which is of course how I am used to working.

Here’s the weird part. The AVC-I 100 movie is 240MB. In FCPx it’s really easy to tell it to transcode your media to ProRes. ProRes is supposedly 145mb/sec. The “High Quality” version of the transcoded avc-I material is 60 MB.

That doesn’t seem right to me. There’s no way to transcode to HQ which isn’t a huge deal, but still the option would be nice. So AVC-I is supported natively, meaning it will transcode to an AVC-I QT wrapped movie, it just won’t use the MXF files. So now I have three copies of the media on my drive, the MXF files, the AVC-I QT movie and the ProRes movie. That does not seem very efficient to me.

I’m hoping the media handling gets better as the project organization possibilities inside of FCP are nothing short of incredible, I have to say.

Cheers,

Jeremy

[Eddie Mcfly]

after you import the media, do you see the metadata in the info inspector? there’s a popup at the bottom of that panel that let’s you choose what kind of metadata you want to see

[Jeremy Garchow]

Thanks, Eddie McFly. You forced me to look around and sure enough, the User Clip Name does comes in, it’s just not applied by default. Scene, Take, Angle is also read from the P2 metadata

You have to apply the user clip name to the imported clips through the gear icon in the inspector. You can select all the clips and apply a naming convention and it will use the info from when the clips were imported. Here’s a screen grab for anyone else looking around:

It does not seem you can set this as a default or map it to a keystroke, nor does it read all the P2 fields, but it’s better than before. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Jeremy