EDL Breakdown.

[Michael Phillips]

Certainly something can be done as a full-on reporting application, but that is a lot more work addressing the smaller end of the market “seat count wise” and one needs to look at ROI. I am sure you’ve already noticed that not all plug-ins are available for MC as for other NLE’s… 🙂

One could consider an easy XSLT file from the XML generated by FilmScribe, but that is not well maintained by Avid, does not work with AMA clips that have any kind of transform as they are considered an “optical” and can no longer be tracked.

The mus.ID works based on the fact that the clip is tagged as a music file when AMA linked so parsing the AAF is fairly easy. I could also let it see all .mov type extensions to flag whatever, but would be compromising the AMA agreement. But a full on, generic reporting app is a lot more work as AAF is not the easiest format to deal with. Also not a long term business seeing as Wes no longer develops Automatic Duck, and that was two resources for several years.

As I mentioned, getting an AMA license from Avid does not give you the freedom to do whatever you like – I could easily do a stock footage tagging app using the same model, but I am not allowed to as I had to be very specific as to what my AMA plug-in was going to do. If Avid is planning on developing a similar solution, you will not get the license, or under very defined (limited) use.

Now AAF for the most part is open, and I have thought about recreating a combined EDL Manager/FilmScribe/reporting application and even had one designed for Avid when I was there. To me, right now, it is not worth the effort. There’s always the “rumors”about Avid updating what they have. But I have some ideas on how the reporting app might be able to do something, but the price would change.

This plug-in was quick to make, and useful, and if it generates some money, great. Avid does not do a whole lot to promote it, it has been very difficult to get Avid to add it their AMA page despite multiple requests. Kinda funny since Avid used it as part of their NAB main stage demo this year. Maybe once they get Marketplace 2.0 in place there will be additional value in developing. But for small one/two person shops, an Avid only plug-in is not going to feed you. Adobe reached out to me when they saw it and am looking into a version for them.

Michael

[Greg Cohan]

Shane… I’m testing the music ID now. AMA ing and transcoding all the MP3 from the entire Music Collective Library. It’s pretty nifty to have all the medadata. Grab me on Monday and I’ll show you what I have managed to get in so far. I’m not to concerned about mp3 quality verse Wave BWF. For what we do by the time its mixed compressed sent to satellite and broadcast. No one will here the difference.

I talked directly to the guys that do the sequence clip reports for FCpro and begged them to make an avid version but they just are not going to do it.

One work around I found was
Export AAF. Bring AAF into Catdv pegasus and you can print a report from there. But the downside with all those workflows – autoducking into Final Cut…AAF to resolve is 3rd party’s recognizing the effects we use

🙁

Sometime before I retire someone with programming skills will understand that the need to report footage usage is broadcast wide for anything that airs.

I know the concern is who will pay but If I’m the money bags and I usually am I would rather an AE print a report in ten minutes then a AP spend weeks making them.

[Shane Ross]

Hey boss!

Yeah, I’ve tried getting those guys to make an Avid version, but they say the market is too small. They did gangbusters (and still do) with the FCP version. I helped steer it to what it is today, and every AP I told about it squealed with glee when they saw it.

I’d love to see what we are doing now. I’ve been so out of the loop of this stuff lately.

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Michael Phillips]

I don’t know if you’ve looked into it, and they have a demo version available, is BeaTunes (https://www.beatunes.com) that is originally designed for DJ’s and the like, but the ability to insert tags, mood, description and BPM is also very handy to have on the library assets when later searching in Media Composer. We are looking into supporting the color and span based sectioning of the songs that is now part of their v4 release.

And on OS X, I use GetLyrical, a free app for inserting lyrics by selection. This also gets parsed to the extent of what the bin allows to be loaded (128 characters).

If the FIND feature ever gets updated for range finding, then BPM and other numerically based metadata becomes even easier to find.

Michael