[Alex Elkins]

Hi Andrew,

I’m doing a test with an FCP project here with the same material transferred both with Log & Transfer and externally (REDCine-X – this is R3D Media but the principle is the same).

There is indeed metadata buried inside the FCP project file that refers to a clip being brought in with Log & Transfer. You can see this if you open a project file with Text Edit and search for L&T plugin.

Anyway, that’s about as far as I can go with it as it’s beyond my capabilities to understand how to correctly modify metadata attached to other clips.

Rafael – XDCAM Transfer adds a reel name to the clips. It uses the folder prior to the BPAV folder, same as FCP. Similar with the RED tools as well. I’m not sure reel name is the difference between the two ingest methods, or am I missing something? Looks like a metadata tag stored with the FCP project file from what I can tell.

Anyway, maybe someone will devise a way to tag other clips with the L&T metadata one day. I don’t think it’s a feature Apple would want to add.

All the best,
Alex

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.PostBlue.tv
Shot on RED, Post on FCP/Color: Short Capoeira Film

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Andrew,

What you’re experiencing is an unfortunate side effect of using 3rd party applications to ingest for FCP. It’s rather frustrating that there doesn’t seem to be a way to force FCP to Log and Transfer over Log and Capture when you choose to Batch Capture.

As you mention, there is presumably some line of metadata somewhere (probably within the FCP project itself, not the Quicktime files) that tells FCP to Log and Transfer. The trick is finding a way to override it to do what you want. This applies to all tapeless formats and I’m betting there’s a clever way to do it. I’ll have a root around and post here if I can find anything.

There’s a chap called Bouke Vahl who runs https://www.videotoolshed.com – he is a genius when it comes to unearthing hidden secrets in QuickTime/FCP and creates a lot of applications to overcome some of FCP’s features/limitations. If it can be done I bet he’ll be able to design an application to do it.

All the best,
Alex

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.PostBlue.tv
Shot on RED, Post on FCP/Color: Short Capoeira Film

[Alex Elkins]

[Thomas Morter-Laing] “the ONLY thing you can use to expand is the Esata connection”

Hi Thomas,

You can do more than just expand e-SATA with the MBPs – there are all sorts of cards that fit into the Express-34 slot. We have one that connects to a PCI-e expansion chassis, giving us three PCI-e cards of our choice. We have used it to house a REDRocket, Fibre Channel card and FireWire 800 card simultaneously. Works great, and all on a laptop.

That’s not to say I don’t prefer to work with a Mac Pro! But it’s useful to know you can do all this with a laptop when we go ‘in the field’.

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.PostBlue.tv
Shot on RED, Post on FCP/Color: Short Capoeira Film

[Alex Elkins]

Sounds like the connection on the Mac Pro. Try plugging it into the Firewire port at the back.

Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.PostBlue.tv
Shot on RED, Post on FCP/Color: Short Capoeira Film

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Tom,

There is no way you would have had a gray bar if you were adding JPEGs to an XDCAM sequence. Maybe it had done an auto render and you were looking at a dark blue render bar??

Anyway, a couple of things the check:
1. Make sure your RT settings are set to ‘Unlimited’
2. Change your sequence settings to Apple ProRes 422
3. Make sure no other sequence settings are wrong, i.e. 1080 HDTV, Square Pixels, etc
4. Make sure you’ve not very slightly moved or resized the Photo JPEG images.

There is no way that what you’re doing will give you a grey render bar in any of these circumstances but you should get realtime playback without having to render.

All the best,
Alex

Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.PostBlue.tv
Shot on RED, Post on FCP/Color: Short Capoeira Film

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Rafael

It’s not a question of whether we’d like to use QT in this way as we already can (and I will). I just wondered if FCP could read all of the video layers and therefore automate the process a bit more. It seems not, but personally I’d love the option for the reasons I’ve stated.

Thanks,
Alex

Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.PostBlue.tv
Shot on RED, Post on FCP/Color: Short Capoeira Film

[Alex Elkins]

Good list Jeremy – much more concise than my example too!

BTW I tested this in After Effects and it doesn’t recognise the multiple tracks. After Effects also seemed to have issues correctly interpreting the existence of the alpha channel from the GFX when I extracted the layer from the QT master. This was solved with a roundtrip from FCP to After Effects.

Alex

Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.PostBlue.tv
Shot on RED, Post on FCP/Color: Short Capoeira Film

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks for your input. It does increase the file size. I’m testing on a 720/25p ProRes 4444 file. The total file size of the multi-track QuickTime is slightly larger that the sum of the individual layers.
However, this being ProRes the file size is variable, so for instance, the graphics layer is much smaller than the programme layer (like, 5 times smaller) despite it being the same length. It works out smaller in size compared to keeping one dirty version and one clean version of a finished programme on file.

Hi Rafael,

Thanks for your input as well. To answer your question about the usefulness of this…
[Rafael Amador] “I don’t see big advantages on that feature.
In real life I don’t see much need of packing together many Video tracks (security cameras?).”

We do a lot of sports broadcasting, so all of our finished programmes tend to have score graphics up pretty much throughout. Months later we might want to cut a montage of action from the pre-edited programme, but we don’t want to have graphics burned in to the images. This is fine if we still have the source files on our system, but usually they will be archived onto LTO tapes and deleted from the scratch disk once the programme is delivered. We keep a master file of the finished programme on a local disk.
It would be very useful in this situation to be able to extract the clean images from a single master file (and if needed we could include the graphics, but at least we’d have the option not to). Seems more organised than keeping multiple versions – one clean, one dirty.
It would also be a handy addition to files with burnt-in-timecode in that you could turn off or on the TC burn at any point without re-rendering.

FCP has this support for audio tracks. I think, as Jeremy says, the infrastructure is there given that it all works perfectly in QuickTime player. Would be a very nice addition in my opinion.

Thanks,
Alex

Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.PostBlue.tv
Shot on RED, Post on FCP/Color: Short Capoeira Film

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Bouke,

Does your software also work with MP4 files?

Thanks,
Alex

Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.PostBlue.tv
Shot on RED, Post on FCP/Color: Short Capoeira Film

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Shane,

It hasn’t happened to me, I just thought it was an interesting topic. BTW Calibrated maintains TC and reel name as well.

I had a response from Calibrated. A summary of the key points is below: