[Anders Teigen]

Well, I have looked into both Virtual Kathy and EdiTrace, but it seems like their workflow also is based on changes in the picture track, moving whole segments of the edit, keeping the internal relationship. But how does it act when pieces of sound moves around internaly – like VO or music, or offscreeen dialog?

Please correct me if I am wrong, I am very interested in any hands-on-experience. I have not used those programs myself, only browsed info on their websites, and searched forums.

Virtual Kathy is also pretty expensive, I’ll rather stick to “Manual Kathy” labour if it comes down to that.

Pyramix has the posibility to import FCP XML (from FCP 7). Anyone been through that workflow?
Guess you have to copy media to the Audio Workstation, but can you then get a new edit by xml and keep all the work allready done?

[Anders Teigen]

So, any news? Are the XML-code released? Does anybody know if it is possible to download DTS or schema of some sort? I am no big developer, but have utilisized xml earlier for my own small helper apps.

I can’t find anything on the net about this.

regards
Anders

[Anders Teigen]

Thanks for the tip.
We finished earlier today. This is how we did it.

1. I created a simple renaming tool in automator and removed all instances of ampersand (“&”) in the media file names.
2. In CatDV: we filtered the catalog and found all the corresponding entries. They were now offline because the renaming of files.
3. Selected the entries, did update media directories. Had to manually connect to each media file. Now The media files were correct, and the mediaPath in CatDV was correct. But the Name still had the ampersand.
4. Exported a Final Cut Pro XML of the selection
5. Imported XML in to FCP, selected all clips, made a rename > clip to match file.
6. Exported XML back to CatDV, and pasted the all correct entries in to the master catalog.

What have we learned of this? Never ever ever put an ampersand (&) in a filename, stay away from special unicode characters and characters like norwegian “æ”, “ø”, or “å” – and avoid whitespace while we’re at it. And even if most editors may know this very well, it doesn’t follow that the loggers or self-logging directors do – so set up a naming standard at the outset of shooting a new film. I prefer Date_Location_incremental for file based media. Tape_Location_incremental for tape based. Everything else in other columns. This for documentary work, fiction may want to do something else. Good night, and good luck!

[Anders Teigen]

It’s a good way to go to rename files, only in my case I have to get rid of the ampersand in my filenames (“&”) before I go to FCP, because the XML goes corrupt, and then I cant get the clips from CDV to FCP in the first place.

[Anders Teigen]

There is a lot of logging done in the CatDV catalog after initial import that I don’t want to loose. In todays cost-benefit analysis it seams that the manual way is the better one: Rename files in finder, then Attach media for each clip.

Thanks a lot for all help though.

-anders

[Anders Teigen]

Thanks Rolf for helping me out here.

Creating a new catalog and importing the file directly works! 

Then I copy a clip from the original project – it does not work. 

The initial importing and logging took place at a different facility, so I cannot account for what they did. But what I can read out of the differences between the imports is this:

• They have the same name identical to the filename – BUT the initial import does not have the extension (mov) in the name. I’ve tried to add the .mov extension and then rename, but it still doesn’t work.
• The logger have changed the tape name in the catalog, and this is not the same as in the mediafile. I’ve tried to change it back, but it still doesn’t work.
• The import path is different (the existing mediapath is the same). I am working on files from an identical disk as the original, so this should not be a problem.
• The field/column called FileExtension differs – and I find this very interesting… The initial imported clip (not working) is said to have XML, while my imported files comes up as MOV, as would be expected. I’ve learned that the initial import was via FCP and XML, while my latest test was importing media directly from disk. I would assume that the dog is burried somewhere along the xml-path.

[Anders Teigen]

Thanks! I’ll do that.

[Anders Teigen]

This sounds very good, I just can’t get it to work. I’ve checked auto rename and attribute IDs in advanced user preferences, I’ve got only the Name (NM1), the change works in the catalog, but when revealing the file in finder it’s just the old file name. I am not prompted during this operation as described in the CatDV Help.

It should work, but it doesn’t. It must be me.

[Anders Teigen]

“The destination of a bulk edit can’t be a read only field”

So there is no way to change the media file names from inside CatDV?

[Anders Teigen]

Thanks for good ideas!

I’m not on a server solution, so I guess I will try to manage with Bulk Edit. At the moment I can not find a way to rename so the media files get the same names. The names of the media file on disk does not change. This is essential. If the link later should be lost between the file and log in FCP, it will be very hard to locate the right file if they are not the same.

There are three possible columns for “name” in the catalog view, but only one available in the Bulk Edit tool. Is there a way to get to the “hidden” columns from bulk edit?