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FCPX and skeuomorphism
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[Walter Soyka] “We still need to uniquely identify frames from pools of files, and we still need to conform, but the tape metaphor is no longer relevant for many, and now there’s no physical piece “
The lack of a physical reel frees us to assign reel how we want. For us a reel is essentially a camera-day that may span many cards. It’s a way to group shots from a specific camera with a single ID. We are generating less reel numbers this way than we did with tape where we’d have multiple reels for a camera-day.
[Walter Soyka] “Basically, we used to think in units of reels, and now with file-based recording, we can think in units of shots. Whether there’s a practical distinction between shot ID and reel ID is debatable”
I agree as long as shot ID is passed to a file extracted from a master file. If it’s a UUID it typically is not.
John
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[John Heagy] “You should join me in asking Panasonic to include “reel” as part of the MXF metadata then. 😉
It’s a shocking omission IMHO.”
Well.
This, of course, is where the conversation gets interesting.
While Panasonic doesn’t offer a “reel” section in the XML, it does offer a tremendous amount of other data, some user assignable, some not, as you know.
GlobalClipID (which is different from UUID) is what I think of as a reel. As a matter of fact, it’s what is my reel in FCP7 when using p2 MXF media:
Using the folder name as a reel doesn’t quite give enough information. What if that folder changes or in the case of P2, you separate out a few clips in to a new P2 structure, and that folder is now different?
If the material is transcoded, shouldn’t the reel match the original?
The hardest part will be getting NLE developers to agree on how to use “Reel” interchangeably.
Jeremy
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[Walter Soyka] “A reel ID, taken in conjunction with timecode, uniquely identify individual frames, helps you conform EDLs across systems, and helps you match back to the original source media.”
The labs I’m dealing with are using Reel ID as a crucial part of the conform – this is with RED, C300, 5D, etc., likely because it is well integrated into XML and EDL workflows (even if its meaning or use has shifted slightly from the original purpose).
I don’t really care if it is referred to a tape, card, drive, folder or whatever, it’s a useful bit of metadata pipe. Certainly one can imagine better implementations of conform workflow – but I don’t think Apple will be the one filling that need.
[Bill Davis] “So the card (reel) is just one kind of a bit bucket. … I think more in terms of creating and managing cloned buckets of the DATA that reel originally contained. With that attitude, I see it as a virtual data arrangement that I can label and store and move and re-name and ALL the foundational metadata about date, time, image IDs, etc, etc, etc, remains attached.”
It’ll be interesting to see if Apple ever gets serious about metadata, Bill. You were mentioning Lightroom recently – that’s not a bad aspirational model for Apple in terms of metadata.
Franz.
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[Franz Bieberkopf] “It’ll be interesting to see if Apple ever gets serious about metadata, Bill. You were mentioning Lightroom recently – that’s not a bad aspirational model for Apple in terms of metadata.”
It’s not just an issue of Apple. The point of a proper source/reel ID is that it can be embedded into the media file itself, just like timecode. That was the beauty of things with FCP 7. If the camera defaulted to giving everything an ID of 001, I could alter the media files to something more valuable inside FCP 7. That ID was embedded in the QT file, so that when I sent the same media file to a colorist using Baselight, he was able to read the same source ID information as I did in FCP 7.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Panasonic’s GlobalClipID is better than the typical UUID only approach, but it’s not very human friendly if one needs a way to refer to groups of clips. We apply our in house “reel” to the “Program” mxf field and then map that to QT Reel via CatDV.
We could use the GlobalClipID and/or an in house number as a per clip “reel” but our organization communicates very effectively using our in house reel numbers to refer to groups of clips. In the end we may use both as long as the per clip ID is preserved and not reset.
Right now we don’t see any down side with our camera-day reel assignments.
John
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[John Heagy] “Panasonic’s GlobalClipID is better than the typical UUID only approach, but it’s not very human friendly if one needs a way to refer to groups of clips. We apply our in house “reel” to the “Program” mxf field and then map that to QT Reel via CatDV.
We could use the GlobalClipID and/or an in house number as a per clip “reel” but our organization communicates very effectively using our in house reel numbers to refer to groups of clips. In the end we may use both as long as the per clip ID is preserved and not reset.
Right now we don’t see any down side with our camera-day reel assignments.”
Yes, that sounds like a great system.
And yes, The GlobalClipID is not human readable friendly, but it is highly accurate. I can spotlight search that number and all of the resulting files would come up. It’s rather handy.
Some of our stuff gets repurposed, so the reel might change. We might give two clips from a card of 150 to someone else.
It’s all in how you use it, I guess.
I too, tend to group using Program, but also “Location”. This is even better vetted with Panasonic camera that have GPS tc in them. Then, even the Location is taken care of. What is necessary is NLEs to take advantage of this information. The camera serial numbers are another good way to group footage from mutlicamera shoots.
What I like about GlobalClipID is that it doesn’t change. That information is stored with those clips virtually forever, similar to a piece of footage would live on a tape/reel which is why it seems to be a logical choice for reel replacement, even if it means not being able to read it easily.
Jeremy
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[Franz Bieberkopf] “It’ll be interesting to see if Apple ever gets serious about metadata,”
What do you mean by serious?
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[John Heagy] “The lack of a physical reel frees us to assign reel how we want. For us a reel is essentially a camera-day that may span many cards. It’s a way to group shots from a specific camera with a single ID. We are generating less reel numbers this way than we did with tape where we’d have multiple reels for a camera-day.”
Sure — and a lot of other people are currently using reel this same way. But the reason to do it is interchange with other apps which require reel/TC information moreso than because “camera-day” is a useful construct.
With all this fancy metadata, you should be able to track your cameras and your days separately, by serial number and by date — as well as any other collected metadata you choose, like location, time, or lens data, and sort footage accordingly. You’d get everything you could get from “camera-day” and more.
Again, I’m with you that this a sensible way to work today; I just think that Bill’s right that we’re not using “reel” the way we used to.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “the reason to do it is interchange with other apps which require reel/TC information moreso than because “camera-day” is a useful construct.
“We would still use reel even if interchange was moved to other metadata. We maintain unique reel IDs from the first tape we created starting at 1000 and continuing today past 270000. It’s really part of our production lexicon. Any shot whether it’s from camera footage, graphic elements or edited maters, can be found from two numbers, reel and TC.
[Walter Soyka] “With all this fancy metadata, you should be able to track your cameras and your days separately, by serial number and by date -“
Everything starts with reel, and things like you list are added on top. Reel can be applied to any media whereas camera specific information like location, serial, cannot be applied to edit masters or elements. For us it’s one size fits all.
Somebody at Apple thinks Reel is important because it’s in FCPX’s basic metadata view. Just finnish the job and read your own embedded metadata for Pete’s sake!
Going one step farther, I’d like to see FCPX have the ability to embed a user defined reel when exporting movies.
John
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That all makes a lot of sense, John!
I’m certainly not arguing against “reel” in the sense of an asset tracking ID — such an ID is just too useful to get rid of — I’m just saying that I think I see Bill’s point that “reel” used to relate clips together in a meaningful and physical way, and now there’s no such thing anymore. We used to overload a couple different elements of metadata into the reel field (a tape or set of tapes usually did correspond with camera-day), and with more metadata-aware tools, we can break them out separately and use reel only for ID and tracking.
Bill, please do correct me if I’m misrepresenting your view!
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events
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