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Log and Transfer clip naming
I have a question for the community on setting clip names when Importing P2 footage. In the case that I’m referring to now, I’m dealing with some sports video. Basketball to be exact. A good portion of what I do deals with sports, so this is a new problem to me, but will be something that I’ll deal with constantly, so I’m hoping to find some answers here.
Within Log and Transfer, I’m pulling in some HD footage. I’ve already dumped the footage off the P2 card onto a hard drive before I go into the Log and Transfer process. Now, here’s where I’m having the trouble. When shooting sports, especially basketball, there’s times when I’m rolling for a long stretch. Now, there could be several things that happen within that long stretch that I will want to capture (or transfer, whichever is the correct term.) If I have a clip that I’ll use and pull out several shots, then, what do I put for name, and how do I distinguish each clip for each other with the detail about that shot, i.e. Barry 3pointer, or Ravern dunk. When I was using tape withing Log and Capture, I could put the name of the game in the NAME box, and then each clip would have a unique name by putting the info about that clip in the SHOT/TAKE box. Then, FCP would add and underscore to the NAME and add the SHOT/TAKE info. Worked perfectly. Each clip would have the game it was shot in and the descriptive name of that particular shot.
Log and Transfer isn’t working for me in that way. Instead, I’m getting clips that have the info from the NAME box, and then a number. That’s not giving me the info I need to edit. How can I set up Log and Transfer to work more like the Log and Capture did? If it’s at all possible. I’d really like to not type the NAME info and then an underscore and then the clip descriptor every time I want to digitize a clip.
I hope I’ve given enough info that somebody might be able to give me some insight. If not, please ask, and I’ll go into detail further.
Thanks in advance.
Marc Rolph
Senior Producer
Mississippi State University“If you chase two rabbits, both will get away.”
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5 Replies
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Sounds like you need to venture into a workflow that includes metadata. In your case, this would be metadata that you prepare after your shoot, but before moving to FCP. Check out this tutorial that I created for Creative Cow and notice that part in there about markers. This would be perfect for you. If you have any questions, plase feel free to write back.
Jeremy
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/garchow_jeremy/dvc_pro_hd.php
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That looks like a nice hefty app. But, I’m not sure it’s going to fill the void that I’m feeling here. It looks as though I’d use the P2CMS (which I haven’t gotten yet, but I’m thinking I will) to search through a whole basketball game of video, and set in’s and out’s on the clips. I’d also name each clip with the name of the game. But, since I would have more than one in and out group within a single P2 clip, I’d still only have a generic name to the clip and not to the specific highlight I want. If I pull that into FCP using the MXF4QT, it looked to me as though I’d have the whole game’s worth of video in my FCP project, with each clip having some in and out markers, but I didn’t see where I could give each in and out a unique name from the rest of the clip. Maybe I’m missing it.
We don’t want to pull entire contents of P2 cards into projects. A whole season’s worth of video would be massive! We only want highlights. We keep the original video on an external drive, if we needed to get a clip that we might have missed in the log and transfer step.
If I’m shooting a basketball game, I’ll start recording and then I will record continuously for several minutes until there’s a stoppage of play. There might have been several plays that happened within those minutes of recorded video that I’ll want to put in my FCP project individually with a unique descriptive name…while at the same time having the clip having the same front of the file name as the others that are shot in that game so that they will be grouped together in the capture scratch folder.
Does that help any?
Marc Rolph
Senior Producer
Mississippi State University“If you chase two rabbits, both will get away.”
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First of all, P2CMS is free, there’s no reason not to have it.
[Marc Rolph] “Maybe I’m missing it. “
You’re not missing it, it’s more that you’re starting to get it. Now, think of it this way. With MXF4mac, there’s no duplication of media. You have your p2 clips, and that’s it. There’s no reason to log and transfer, no quicktime reference movies, nothing except your original shoot data. Since you already have your media shot and stored, there it is, it’s done. Now, when you use markers in the footage like I pointed out in the tutorial, all of that now becomes searchable. So instead of multiple in and out points and therefore multiple QT clips and doubling/tripling your media size, you now have one clip with searchable metadata. The metadata that includes which game, date, whatever you want. You can even put team names, opponents, whatever, the sky’s the limit. Now, let’s say you want only one clip, well, you could use P2CMS to ingest clips in to the ‘database’, and then that new clip then becomes it’s own separate p2 card of sorts with all the metadata traveling with it, of course. Is that starting to make more sense?
[Marc Rolph] ” A whole season’s worth of video would be massive! “
Like how massive? What if you had just the p2 media and not p2 media + QT media?
[Marc Rolph] “There might have been several plays that happened within those minutes of recorded video that I’ll want to put in my FCP project individually with a unique descriptive name…”
What kind of camera? Some p2 cameras allow you to set a user marker while you are shooting. That way when you go to edit/review or prepare your metadata for editing, you can see those markers and know that there’s a specific moment in time you wanted to point out. It is up to you at that point to rename it and then MXF4mac sends that metadata over to FCP in a specific column.
[Marc Rolph] “while at the same time having the clip having the same front of the file name as the others that are shot in that game so that they will be grouped together in the capture scratch folder. “
A ha, but there’s the power of metadata again. If you put the name of the game in the project field, you can then group all of the clips together with the same game name (say that 5 times fast) in a column in FCP, bins/folders/capturescratch be damned. Then, ALL of that metadata is now searchable in Spotlight. Say you have a 1TB drive with the season on it, then you can do a simple finder search for “#23 dunks on #13s face” or “Little Johnny bounce passes to Little Bobby” or whatever descriptor you used to describe what you’re looking for.
Making more sense?
Jeremy
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Alrighty…now it’s hitting home.
I’ll either be using an HPX500 or HPX2000. We just got them in this month…so, I haven’t found out about the marker ability while shooting. I’m very interested in that. I took the 500 on the road with my for the first time this week (we killed the Ketucky Wildcates, in Lexington), so this is the first time this has been an issue for me. I think that will be the cog that will make this machine go. So, does the MXF4Mac render the Log and Transfer step useless? We’re just starting to use a Windowed XSan…so, I’m not overly concerned about having a “backup” of my video. It would be nice to be able to use the files right after I spend the time to offload them from the P2 card.
I’d like to know more…is there a demo version?
Marc Rolph
Senior Producer
Mississippi State University“If you chase two rabbits, both will get away.”
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On the 2000, the text memo button is on the mian switch panel (with bars/gain/etc.) just below the LCD screen. On the 500 (and the HVX200) this function needs to be mapped to user button.
[Marc Rolph] “So, does the MXF4Mac render the Log and Transfer step useless?”
As long as your are shooting DVCPro HD. Yes!
[Marc Rolph] “t would be nice to be able to use the files right after I spend the time to offload them from the P2 card.”
It is very nice and finally a totally tapeless workflow can be realized.
[Marc Rolph] “I’d like to know more…is there a demo version?”
They do, yes.
The are also working on a program called P2 flow which will be a full blown metadata editor and will have all kinds of other cool features for multicam shoots and complete metadata control. It’s going to be very nice and it’s development now.
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