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Suggestions for best-practice logging or batch list format for DSLR footage?
Hope this is the right place to ask this question?
For a lot of my projects (research and documentary) I am getting DSLR files instead of tapes to log and capture. FYI, I am an editor and oftentimes incidental post-production project manager at a micro production company.
Once I had tapes and made handwritten log sheets of what was where. Then realising this was foolhardy I logged entirely in FCP7 and exported batch lists, which I edited into a human readable format for the clients.
Now with DSLR I wonder if this is the best system? Some of my clips are very long and it isn’t necessarily enough to have one description/scene etc per clip. I miss timecode!
What is everyone else doing to make a (semi) permanent log of the footage for future use? Having something that is XML ish or portable for alternate NLEs AND human readable would be great too.
One other thing, sometimes producers want to log the footage and don’t have FCP. Terrible to duplicate effort if an editor has to do the same logging again in the NLE, so what options might there be?
Hope this makes sense?
Cheers
AstridMBP 2.2 GHz intel core duo/ 6 GB RAM /GeForce 8600M GT
Mac Pro 2.8 Quad / Nvidia Quadro 4000 / 12 GB RAM / OSX 10.7 -
2 Replies
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In order to have a good logging system it is important to have a good organization and naming system for all the clips. I cannot necessarily speak for logging and batch list advice but I can speak for how to create a unique name for each clip by giving each clip name date and time information in the description.
If you open up adobe bride, find your clips and highlight them, you can actually batch rename them all and you can select different properties to rename the clip, such as time, date, sequence number, folder name etc. I’m not in front of my computer but I believe batch rename option is under the tools menu in adobe bridge. No need for fcp export!
Errol X. Lazare
EXL Films
http://www.exlfilms.com -
I second Bridge and batch renaming… it’s the best way to keep track of footage in a long-form project with multiple shooters, so you don’t get two different files both called “MVI_0984” or something like that. There’s even an option to include the time created in the filename so you can later assign time-of-day timecode to the clips in your NLE of choice. There is a tutorial on the COW about this subject if I remember correctly.
Cinematographer – Editor – Motion Graphics Artist – Colorist
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