P2 naming scheme

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

Shane asked:
This seems VERY random. 003IJ, 005GT, 007TI…etc. Is there ANY rhyme or reason to this? What is to stop two cameras from assigning the same name to a clip? We have two HVX-200s as B and C cameras, and while it hasn’t happened yet, after 2000+ clip names, we might be running out of options.

No, the naming convention is such that you could have 40 cameras out on the street for a year and ingest all of the footage into a server and none would have a repeat file name.

>Is there any meaning to these clips? Just curious more than anything.

It is the randomness of it that is the plan. You can set up a user clip name thing via the SD card that is beyond the Universal clip name, but the odd number/letter combo is just for the fact that you can immmediately ingest and not worry about duplicate file names.

>(Jan, I am Jim Lindsay’s editor, just so you know)

Hey cool. Tell Jim I said hello. Hope all is going well. We are looking for unique application stories, so any time you cays are ready, we would love to write about what you are doing.

All the best,

JAn

Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems

[Shane Ross]

Thanks. I was curious about that.

I’ll say hi to Jim…shooting again this weekend. MAN is takes a while to sort thru all that footage.

Shane Ross
Alokut Productions
http://www.lfhd.net

[Barry Green]

It’s not as random as it may at first appear.

The first four digits are the number of the clip in order of which clips got shot on that card. The very first clip you shoot will be 0001-something-something.MXF. The last two digits can be numbers or letters, so the first three clips might be:
0001QZ.mxf
0002Y5.mxf
0003EP.mxf

That’s for the XML, VIDEO, and CLIP files; for the AUDIO files there are two additional digits which signify which audio channel they’re from. So for 0001QZ.mxf, you can go in the audio directory and find four files:
0001QZ00.mxf
0001QZ01.mxf
0001QZ02.mxf
0001QZ03.mxf

The names should be distinct enough that you won’t ever run into duplicate file names. But even if you do, there’s a second layer of protection against duplication, which is that each card gets assigned a unique identifier which is something like a 64-character identifier, probably derived from the serial number of the camera so it will be absolutely unique at all times. I would guess it’s based on the serial number of the camera, plus the # of cards or clips that have been shot in that camera, plus some random factor too — so it should be an absolutely unique identifier.

If you throw all your clips in one big folder, the chances do exist that you might get two clips with the same name (although those chances should be something like one out of 1300 of the last two letters lining up, and then compound that by the chances of the first four digits being the same too… it’s going to be no more common than a 1 in 5,000 or 1 in 10,000 chance of getting a similar filename.

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[Shane Ross]

Jan, I REALLY want to write about what we are doing. But as of right now, our network is wanting us to keep a lid on aspects of our shoot.

Hopefully soon we will be able to go thru our process. I do know that our DP spent 10 hours setting up the cameras to match the settings on his Varicam to ensure consistancy. Paying off.

Shane Ross
Alokut Productions
http://www.lfhd.net