how to safely rename media from Sony FS7 or FS5

Sony Cameras

how to safely rename media from Sony FS7 or FS5

Posted by Jonno Woodford-robsinon on June 18, 2021 at 6:50 am

Hi,

Working on a doco with multiple camera operators from various different locations. Several Sony cameras used. Sadly, many of them recorded media with the same filename: CLIP0001.MXF (great…)

I’ve also noticed that Premiere Pro sometimes links to the wrong clip, even though I select the following in Match File Properties:

File Name

File Extension

Media Start (which it seems to ignore…)

Clip ID (which it is also ignoring)

SO, is there a way to rename these clips without causing issues later in post? (I’m happy to manually re-link, or even manually cut back in the clips after doing this if it will save a headache for the rest of the post crew later during the conform and grade.

Additional info I’ve found:

I noticed that the CUEUP.XML and MEDIAPRO.XML files located in XDROOT are the only files that seem to contain clip name info, e.g.

MEDIAPRO.XML:

<Material uri=”./Clip/Clip0001.MXF” type=”MXF” offset=”0″ dur=”68616″ fps=”23.98p” aspectRatio=”16:9″ ch=”4″

and

<RelevantInfo uri=”./Clip/Clip0001M01.XML” type=”XML”/>

and

<RelevantInfo uri=”./Thmbnl/Clip0001T01.JPG” type=”JPG”/>

CUEUP.XML:

<clip uri=”./Clip/Clip0001.MXF”

And there’s MXF, amp and XML files with the same name in each Clip folder (inside the XDROOT folder).

I’m guessing I need to propagate what ever naming convention I use, through to all instances of the name in the XDROOT folder for each clip from every card?

Is there nice friendly inexpensive software to help me here?

Thanks in advance,

Jonno

Ali Grossman replied 4 years ago 4 Members · 5 Replies
5 Replies

Rob Neidig
June 25, 2021 at 5:19 pm

Hi! I was hoping someone with more knowledge than me would answer your question so I could learn something as well. Since they have not, I will just put forward that I have used Sony’s Catalyst Browse software to review and rename clips and everything seems to work fine with those clips in Adobe Premiere Pro after renaming. I am not sure of what metadata or filenames get renamed along with it, but Catalyst Browse seems to take care of that automatically. It’s a free download.

Have fun!
Jonno Woodford-robsinon
June 26, 2021 at 10:48 am

Thanks Rob. So Sony Catalyst Browse allows renaming – if so, that’s great news. I thought only Catalyst Prepare did – but I hope I’m wrong coz Prepare is a monthly subscription.

I also heard somebody had used an adobe product to do the same thing, which I was going to look into.

Thanks for the info about Catalyst Browse, I will go experiment!
Jeremy Cole
July 2, 2021 at 7:42 pm

check this page for the capabilities of Catalyst browse vs prepare:

https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/catalystbrowse/vs/catalystprepare

When I edit with similar file names from different cameras, I put them into different bins by Camera or CamOp (AVID MC).
Jonno Woodford-robsinon
July 2, 2021 at 8:23 pm

Thanks Jeremy.

We’ve kept the clips in their XDROOT and card number folders, but have had issues with Premiere not remembering where to find those files in some instances.

I’ve used Catalyst to rename just the offending clips and it seems to be happier now, which is good.
Ali Grossman
June 10, 2022 at 4:48 am

I use Adobe Bridge “batch rename” to add a prefix name to multiple .mxf files

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