VFX lineup sheets

Avid Media Composer

VFX lineup sheets

Posted by Len Hugh on April 15, 2011 at 7:59 am

Just wanted to start a thread to see how people go about making VFX lineup sheets in some sort of automated way.

More and more I need to get information out of an avid and to a vfx company fast. They generally want to know master TC, source TC, description of the shot, thumbnails and description of the effect for each “element”.

Ideally I think you would describe all of this in some way in the avid and then export something which is then shaped into something which is easy for VFX to read. The only places I know of to describe this info would be locators or columns in a bin.

I have used excel combined with EDLs but its never quite as good as i would like it to be. Applescript, ALE exports, locators exports, file maker pro are all tools I can think of. Does anyone have any thoughts/ experience with a streamlined workflow?

Michael Phillips replied 15 years ago 2 Members · 5 Replies
5 Replies

Michael Phillips
April 17, 2011 at 1:38 am

Film productions have been using FilmScribe and the optical list for years for this information. There are several templates to look at for layout. There is also an XML export which can be parsed or have an XSL applied for conversion. Another one to look at is HTML which is designed for sharing via Internet with hyperlinks and such.

See:
https://www.avid.com/US/resources/filmscribe

for example outputs.

Michael

Michael Phillips
Len Hugh
April 30, 2011 at 11:29 am

Thanks Michael,
I have been looking into Filmscribe and the XML output is very helpful.

However I cant seem to get all the columns in the bin to go into the XML. Only some custom columns appear in the xml.
The help file says

The XML template produces a file that includes all the information about the list: it shows you every column heading and every custom column.

Yet I only get 6 custom name columns when there are many more.
Do you know why this might be?
Len Hugh
April 30, 2011 at 12:05 pm

Figured it out. The sequence I was working with was made in 5.0
I was generating the list from 5.5
once I cut the clip into a new seq in 5.5 all the columns came up.
Michael Phillips
April 30, 2011 at 2:41 pm

XML will export all columns including custom if there is a value in that field for any given shot. So it won’t include tags where there are no values to reduce the size of the overall file (and complexity). An XSL translation file would know how to deal with the tags in a target format.

If this is not what you are seeing, please send me your bin with the sequence in it to michael(at)24p(dot)com

Thanks –

Michael

Michael Phillips
Michael Phillips
April 30, 2011 at 2:44 pm

Ah… good. My last response is still valid though… 😉

Michael

Michael Phillips

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