FrameLink – DPX to QuickTime… and avoiding the Finder copy

[Frank Laughlin]

I’m using ‘funnel’ as a symbolic analogy.

– Open FrameLink.
– Set your settings; click ‘Create’
– Give your new QT movie a name, and choose the location; click ‘Create Movie’

A .mov file will be created on the volume you’ve chosen in step 3 above, and a Volume will be created on your desktop (it will look like another hard drive) with the same name as the .mov file. That new Volume is what I’m calling the ‘funnel’. You drop your DPX files on the Volume/funnel/icon on your desktop and that fills the .mov file that has been created on the drive you specified in step 3 with the media.

What I’m detailing is all on Mac, I have no idea how this works on a PC.

Hope that helps.

– Frank Laughlin
Digitonium

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Two possible fixes to your 165,000 files copy. I’ve been through this too. For feature film DI projects.

I use terminal to copy. Its simple.

Open a terminal window.

On the command line…
Just type ‘cp -nv’ and press space
then drag the source folder into the terminal window
so the full path appears in the terminal
pres ‘space’
Then drag the Framelink volume to the terminal window
so the Framelink path appears after the source path.
Press enter
Copying starts and you get a confirmation for each file that’s written

You can open multiple terminal windows and copy different ranges simultaneously
as long as they are in different folders.

If you want to stop the copy press ctrl-C

If the copying stops for any reason
Open a terminal window
press the up arrow so the last command is retyped automatically in the terminal
Press enter
Copying again only writes files not previously written.
So ‘cp -nv’ behaves like resume the second time around

Another alternative is to divide the entire 1,65,000 seq of frames into folders of under 30000 files.
Use Apple Color to do the conversion from DPX to QT
Its faster than Shake and even does lof to lin, color correction, and scaling/sizing.
Divide into 30000 files folders is because Color doesn’t like timelines over 20 mins.

I used Framelink a lot until Color came out.

I also use GlueTools and Pomfort. But both cost. Color is free.

Neil

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Frank Laughlin]

Thanks, Neil! Great idea. Don’t know why I didn’t think of Terminal.

I couldn’t get the steps you list to work. No files were copied. In going through your steps, I’ve got two questions:

– what does the ‘-nv’ mean in your first command line entry ‘cp -nv’? I can’t find ‘n’ or ‘v’ as options for the ‘cp’ command.

– does there need to be a ‘*’ at the end of the source folder to tell it to copy all files?

Thanks!

– Frank Laughlin
Digitonium

[Priyanka Kadam]

Sir im working on a similar kind of project which you have already created ie; Converting 10bit .dpx sequence files to Quick time ,
we are using JAVA for coding , im able to convert .jpg files to quick time , please kindly guide me !!

help me :
1) how to take .dpx files as input stream
2) how to take these files in sequence
3) how to process them and convert into qt

regards;
Priyanka

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Priyanka,

I’m not sure I know the answer to your question as I’m not a Java programmer. The subject of this thread has been about Blackmagic Framelink and using that to convert DPX sequences to Quicktime. A lot has happened in this world since 2009 when this thread started.

Framelink does not exist as a product. Nor even does Color. Though you can find systems with Apple Color for some time now.

If you have a large requirement on converting DPX to QT, why not just send it out to a post facility near you that has Color installed. They can do the conversion in their spare time and hand you QT movies.

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